Dreaming Water by Gail Tsukiyama

Title:Dreaming Water

Author:Gail Tsukiyama

Rating:

Who Should Read It?People who enjoy books that explore relationships in depth, especially those of a mother and her daughter

What I Have to Say: Gail Tsukiyama has such a beautiful, graceful style of writing that I feel as if she could write about ANYTHING, and I would love it. Everything just sort of flows, each idea merging neatly and beautifully with the next one. With Dreaming Water, as with every other book I have read by Gail Tsukiyama, I felt as if SHE must have been ALL of the characters. How else would she have that much insight into what that kind of relationship must be like?
Dreaming Water, aside from being about a relationship between a mother and her sick daughter, a girl and her sick best friend, and an American woman and her Japanese husband, this book is about strength and courage and being open enough to see things through different eyes than your own. It's about what makes life worth living but also about why these things make it okay to die.
It's such a simple story, but Gail Tsukiyama's telling renders it heartbreaking and heartwarming and magical.
This book is majestical.

Summary (from weread.com):Hana is suffering from Werner's syndrome, a disease that makes a person age at twice the rate of a healthy individual: at thirty-eight Hana has the appearance of an eighty-year-old. Cate, her mother, is caring for her while struggling with her grief at losing her husband, Max, and with the knowledge that Hana's disease is getting worse by the day.

Hana and Cate's days are quiet and ordered. Cate escapes to her beloved garden and Hana reads and writes letters. Each find themselves drawn into their pasts, remembering the joyous and challenging events that have shaped them: spending the day at Max's favorite beach, overcoming their neighbors' prejudices that Max is Japanese-American and Cate is Italian-American, and coping with the heartbreak of discovering Hana's disease.

One of the great joys of Hana's life has been her relationship with her beautiful, successful best friend Laura. Laura has moved to New York from their hometown in California and has two daughters, Josephine and Camille. She has not been home in years and begs Hana to let her bring her daughters to meet her, feeling that Josephine, in particular, needs to have Hana in her life. Despite Hana's latest refusal, Laura decides to come anyway. When Laura's loud, energetic, and troubled world collides with Hana and Cate's daily routine, the story really begins.