Like any eleven-year-old, Yuki is eagerly anticipating Christmas. But the year is 1941, Yuki is a Japanese-American living in California, and the attack on Pearl Harbor by Japan suddenly transforms her entire life. Overnight her parents become "enemy aliens," and Father is taken by the FBI.

Soon the rumor that all Japanese on the West Coast are being evacuated becomes a horrible reality, and Yuki, her mother and older brother, Ken, are sent to the Tanforan Race Track Assembly Center where home is a small, dark horse stall. 

In the next stall live Emi and her grandparents. They become an important part of Yuki's new life and move with her when the camp is shipped to a new site in Topaz, a barbed-wire enclosure in the barren desert of Utah. The harsh, bleak life with its terrifying dust storms bring illness and tragedy to Emi. It also changed Ken, and only an event that arouses the entire camp helps him rediscover himself. But in the process, there are new goodbyes and eventually a parting even with Emi. Yoshiko Uchida tells with vivid realism and deep understanding the story of Yuki and her family, and of how they endured the tragic upheaval of the evacuation with dignity, quiet courage, and loyalty. 

From the dust jacket