Stone Field, True Arrow

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

Simple language and strong emotion are effectively used to relate the story of Maya Ishida, a 35-year-old Japanese-American woman who must confront her painful past in order to re-evaluate her safe but soul-crushing present. Maya works as an artisan, weaving cloth and making clothes. She's married to high school English teacher Jeff and they live placidly in Wisconsin, near her childhood friend, Yuko. When Maya is informed that her father, whom she hasn't seen for 25 years, has died in Osaka, it is the enclosed drawing that jars her memory: her artist father drew a picture of the day 10-year-old Maya left Japan to move to Minneapolis with her mother, Kay, who had abandoned her husband and Maya three years earlier. Maya attempts to understand why, after she moved to the States, she never heard from her father again; why the letters she wrote him were returned unopened; why he allowed her to be raised by cruel, selfish Kay, who has tried to erase every trace of her Japanese origins and encourages her daughter to do the same. In the process, Maya comes to terms with her passionless marriage, learning to cope with the fear of being alone and falling in love for the first time. This first foray into adult fiction by YA author and memoirist Mori (Shizuko's Daughter; The Dream of Water) is graceful in its simplicity of language and in the subtle way in which Eastern and Western folk tales are interlaced with the plot line. The pace of the book is perhaps too leisurely, maintaining a calm, unruffled tone even at the emotional apex, but despite the mannered structure, Maya's cultural identity and family history are lucidly invoked, and her struggle emerges as a universal one. 5-city author tour. (Sept.) Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.|

Library Journal

The author of Shizuko s Daughter, a New York Times Best Young Children s Book, and the memoir Polite Lies, Mori (creative writing, Harvard) unveils her first work of fiction for adults. The story opens with 34-year-old Maya, a Wisconsin artisan, learning of the death of her father in Japan. Throughout, Maya searches her memories to find any evidence of love from her estranged father, an artist with whom she lived in Japan until she was sent to her mother and stepfather in America. In a work revolving around relationships, Mori takes the reader on Maya s journey of self-discovery. Quiet and reclusive by nature, she undergoes numerous emotional struggles, such as dealing with her twice-divorced mother and confronting the disintegration of her own marriage while flirting with the notion of an impending affair. As a whole, Mori s work and narration are deeply thoughtful, yet the novel appears to carry one too many story lines, leaving many of her characters somewhat underdeveloped and making them potentially hard to relate to for some readers. This aside, Mori s work is not without merit and is recommended for larger fiction collections as needed. Shirley N. Quan, Orange Cty. P.L., Santa Ana, CA Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.

Jeff Waggoner

Stone Field, True Arrow is a sweet and sorrowful book about love: love lost and love seemingly regained. This is a quiet, heartbreaking novel that has as much to say about art as it does about longing.
—New York Times Book Review

Kirkus Reviews

Memoirist Mori (Polite Lies, 1998, etc.) offers her first adult novel, a meditative though not very sympathetic look at one woman's journey in reconciling her lonely childhood with the bleak present she has created for herself.