This unusual first novel is based on true accounts of the imprisonment of American citizens in Japanese detention camps in the Philippines during World War II. Louise Keller travels with her missionary family to the Philippines on the eve of Pearl Harbor. At first the country seems like paradise, but soon Louise and her family are captured by the Japanese and forced to live in internment camps. An exciting and thought-provoking novel about human strength and weakness in wartime

Jane Hertenstein will donate a portion of her royalties for this book to help build houses for residents of Smokey Mountain, a large garbage dump in Manila where hundreds of people live under scraps of metal and cardboard.