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Home | Archives ]  'Fire' Sale: Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's
latest book tells the story of three generations of Japanese-
American women.  Smoke, She is A-Rising  Fire horse women and
picture brides are the stuff of Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston's
'Legend'  By Jessica Neuman Beck  Every local of a certain age
has stories about San Jose when it was all orchards over the
hill, but Jeanne Wakatsuki Houston does them one better: she has
stories about San Jose before it was anything. The Legend of
Fire Horse Woman (Kensington Publishing, 304 pages, $23 cloth)
tells the story of three generations of Japanese-American women:
Sayo, a picture bride from Japan; her daughter Hana, unhappily
living in an arranged marriage; and Terri, Sayo's youngest
granddaughter. Set in the early years of the 20th century in the
Bay Area and Watsonville, as well as the Manzanar internment
camp in eastern California in the 1940s, Legend of Fire Horse
Woman explores the different ways