Set in a small town south of San Francisco during World War II, Words of My Roaring is a compelling picture of the confusions, the dislocations, and the brutality of war as they affect the home front. The novel recreates a neighborhood in San Bruno and connects it to San Francisco and the larger stage of the war. Tanforan racetrack, first an assembly camp for Japanese Americans awaiting internment, becomes a naval training base for Pacific-bound recruits. The elementary school becomes a USO, and air-raid drills and blackouts are routine as California prepares for an expected Japanese...

"It s 1981, and thirteen-year-old Roscoe McAdams and his brother and sister have always lived with their parents, Sebastian and Moonstar, in an isolated cabin high on a ridge in California s northern Sierra, though often in spring when Moonstar can t stand the snow anymore she takes them for a stay down below. They ve mostly been home-schooled.
Then, through a fluke that April, Moonstar becomes a substitute teacher in a small town and enrolls the kids in school there. Roscoe assumes that when summer comes, they ll go back to the ridge and Sebastian: that s how it s always been. But they...