Rebecca is excited to chat with Canadian author Leslie Shimotakahara about her latest novel, The Breakwater, which will be published by Cormorant Books in April 2026.

https://www.cormorantbooks.com/Books/T/The-Breakwater

"One morning in Toronto, Cathy Matsumoto’s father, Yasuo, calls to announce he intends to visit a dying cousin in British Columbia.

Cathy’s never heard of this mysterious relative before, but she begrudgingly agrees to plan a family trip with her father and daughter, Tessa, to Victoria, the hometown Yas was forcibly evicted from when Japanese Canadians were interned during World War Two. It's only in BC that Cathy learns this “cousin” is actually Yas’s younger brother, Stum, who’s been languishing in psychiatric care, abandoned, ever since Yas committed him to Essondale Asylum before the war.

Yas tries to fend off probing questions from his daughter and granddaughter, but revisiting old haunts brings back memories of the brothers’ boyhood rivalry and coming-of-age near Victoria’s Chinatown, when Yas’s resolve to hold their fractured family together clashed against Stum’s troublesome turn toward a life of gambling, crime, and consorting with prostitutes.

In this heartbreaking family story, two brothers, both old men not far from death, must at last confront long-buried family secrets — and their lingering effects on subsequent generations."

Recommended Books:

• Flashlight by Susan Choi
• Worldly Girls: A Memoir by Tamara Jong
• It Must Be Beautiful to Be Finished: A Memoir of My Body by Kate Gies

https://leslieshimotakahara.com/

https://www.instagram.com/leslieshimotakahara

It's Book Chat time! Rebecca had a meh reading month and Tara crushed it!!

Rebecca (@canadareadsamericanstyle):

• Director's Choice: Flint Institute of Arts by Tracee J. Glab
• Poets and Pahlevans: A Journey into the Heart of Iran; Walls: Travels Along the Barricades by Marcello Di Cintio
• Lost: Amelia Earhart's Three Mysterious Deaths and One Extraordinary Life by Rachel Hartigan

Tara (@onabranchreads):

• No Friend to This House by Natalie Haynes
• Bang Crunch by Neil Smith
• The Art Thief: A True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession by Michael Finkel
• Villain Hitting for Vicious Little Nobodies by Lindsay Wong
• The Lottery and Other Stories by Shirley Jackson
  • "A Fine Old Firm"
• Why I Love Horror: Essays on Horror Literature by Becky Siegel Spratford
• A Truce That is Not Peace by Miriam Toews
• Redshirts Sometimes Survive by Finnian Burnett
• The Tinder Sonnets by Jennifer LoveGrove
• Shoebox by Sean Paul Bedell
• Good Guys by Sharon Bala
• Stag Dance; Detransition, Baby by Torrey Peters

If you have any comments or suggestions that you would like to share with Rebecca and Tara or you are interested in joining their monthly virtual book talk, please email them at craspod2019@gmail.com

Rebecca and Tara have an announcement!!

Instagram:

@canadareadsamericanstyle

@onabranchreads