Cover of Plum Wine

Plum Wine

Bottles of homemade plum wine link two worlds, two eras, and two lives through the eyes of Barbara Jefferson, a young American teaching at a Tokyo university. When her surrogate mother, Michi, dies, Barbara inherits an extraordinary gift: a tansu chest filled with bottles of homemade plum wine wrapped in sheets of rice paper covered in elegant calligraphy—one bottle for each of the last twenty years of Michi's life.

Read more

Why did Michi leave her memoirs to Barbara, who cannot read Japanese? Seeking a translator, Barbara turns to an enigmatic pottery artist named Seiji, who will offer her a companionship as tender as it is forbidden. But as the two lovers unravel the mysteries of Michi's life, a story that draws them through the aftermath of World War II and the hidden world of the hibakusha, Hiroshima survivors, Barbara begins to suspect that Seiji may be hiding the truth about Michi's past—and a heartbreaking secret of his own.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 352 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Plum Wine? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Plum Wine. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. The Teahouse Fire Shares historical fiction, Japan, fiction
  2. American Fuji Shares Japan, fiction, asian
  3. The Favorites Shares Japan, historical fiction, fiction
  4. The Snow Fox Shares historical fiction, Japan, fiction

“People who read Plum Wine tend to reach for these next.”

  1. Japanland: A Year in Search of Wa
  2. Madame Sadayakko: The Geisha Who Bewitched the West
  3. The Printmaker's Daughter
  4. Murder on the Celtic

“If you want more of the same (historical fiction about women), start with these.”

  1. Sayonara
  2. A Dictionary of Mutual Understanding
  3. Color of the Sea
  4. The Samurai's Garden

“If it was the Japan that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. The Tale of Murasaki
  2. The Apprentice
  3. The Street of a Thousand Blossoms
  4. One Morning Like A Bird

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Love by the Glass: Tasting Notes from a Marriage
  2. Another Love
  3. The Wine Trials
  4. Lights, Camera, Amalee