The Kizuna Coast: A Rei Shimura Mystery (Rei Shimura Mysteries Book 11)

by Sujata Massey

  Thoughts of caipirinhas were being replaced by milk and cookies. Hugging the little girl, I said, “I bet that Hachiko’s been looking out the shop window every day, waiting for you to come play with her. We’ll stop to see her after this train ride.”

  “Kids and dogs together are great, aren’t they?” Michael’s blue eyes shot meaningful glances at me right over the smooth top of Miki’s head. I raised my eyebrows at him. This was a better conversation to have in Hawaii, on a Friday night in the cottage’s backyard, watching the sun set over the Pacific.

  “Hey, don’t miss your boarding call,” Akira said. The station attendants were signaling more vehemently and electronic bells were ringing out warnings. The three of us jumped on just as the doors whooshed closed.

  Through the glass, Akira waved wildly until our train was past the platform. Then I turned away from the window. Michael was talking to the confectionary seller with a cart at the far end of the compartment while Miki skipped down the aisle, looking for the correct empty row.

  Watching them, I thought about how this was supposed to be the end of a journey. But somehow, it felt like the start of something new.

  Acknowledgments

  I am grateful to a number of good people for helping bring The Kizuna Coast to life. Foremost are my longtime friends Satoshi Mizushima and Koichi Hyogo, who furnished many helpful details about the immediate days following the earthquake. Of course, Sugihama is a fictional Tohoku town hit by the wave, but general details about the volunteer experience were supplied by Masako Tanaka and Jun Sato, Tokyo residents who volunteered many, many weekends in Rikuzen Takata and are living examples of the concept of kizuna. Thank you so much for what you did for the people of Tohoku, and how you helped me in my work.

  Naomi Hirahara, a dear friend and fellow author who volunteered in Tohoku in 2012, also provided wonderful details about Tohoku. Jennifer Sawyer Fisher was an insightful developmental editor with great ideas, and Barb Goffman a ruthless, accomplished line editor. Before them the early chapters of this book were reviewed by my Minneapolis reading group: Gary Bush, Heidi Skarie, and Stanley Trollip, and two other writer friends, Eden Unger Bowditch and Marcia Talley. Lifetime Honolulu resident Liz Tajima once again was a superb vetter of Hawaii details.

  I also thank the readers of my Asiafile newsletter for commenting on early chapters and so many Facebook friends from around the world who cheered on the book’s creation. Honest reviews are very helpful to me as an author and also to other book buyers. Please consider leaving a review here or at Goodreads or anywhere else. If you’re a blogger interested in advance reading copies of other books that you’d write about or review, e-mail me here for details on joining the reviewers’ list.

  About the Author

  Sujata Massey is the author of many books set in Japan, India, and the United States. She was born in England to parents from India and Germany, but was raised mostly in Saint Paul, Minnesota. Sujata is a graduate of the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, where she studied in the Writing Seminars department. After university she worked as a features reporter for Baltimore’s Evening Sun newspaper. Her next adventure was moving to Japan with husband Anthony Massey, where two wonderful years passed by too quickly. As an effort to preserve memories—and try her hand for the first time at fiction—Sujata began writing The Salaryman’s Wife, the first book in the Rei Shimura series. Rei novels have won the Agatha and Macavity mystery awards and been named finalists for the Edgar, Anthony, and Mary Higgins Clark awards. They’re published in fifteen countries so far. The entire Rei series is forthcoming as audiobooks. Currently available in audio are The Typhoon Lover (Rei #8) to be followed later this year by The Kizuna Coast (Rei #11).

  Readers who like international fiction and historical suspense should check out Sujata’s books set in early twentieth-century India. The Sleeping Dictionary is available as both a novel and audiobook in the US, and is also published as The City of Palaces in India, as L’Amante di Calcutta in Italy, and as Yutak Ogretmeni in Turkey. The Ayah’s Tale is a novella in paper and e-book.