Nebraska Book Award Winner for best fiction 2025

America at Last. Isamu watches intently from the deck of the S.S. Coptic as San Francisco comes into view...the fulfillment of a dream. A new century is about to begin. Isamu is handsome, charismatic, with money in his pocket. Anything is possible.
But his dream does not include bubonic plague or a devastating earthquake. Nor does it include racial prejudice or anti-miscegenation laws.
The trading company is put on hold when Isamu has to settle for the first job he can find, at a small American diner near the San Francisco wharf.
Lola Cervantes, beautiful and mesmerizing, steals Isamu's heart from the beginning, and even though Lola shares that feeling, her mother does not.
Fr. Katz was right. San Francisco is not Kamaishi.