The Buddha in the Attic by Julie Otsuka

This is such a spartan book in terms of size (only 129 pages!) but the breadth and depth of the stories it tells are vast.  While there are not any "main characters" in the book, there are many nameless but rich characters, all referred to in the plural "we." They are the Japanese women who came over from their homeland on boats to meet and marry their husbands in California.

“On the boat we could not have known that when we first saw our husbands we would have no idea who they were. That the crowd of men in knit caps and shabby black coats waiting for us down below on the dock would bear no resemblance to the handsome young men in the photographs. That the photographs we had been sent were 20 years old. . . . That when we first heard our names being called out across the water one of us would cover her eyes and turn away — I want to go home — but the rest of us would lower our heads and smooth down the skirts of our kimonos and walk down the gangplank and step out into the still warm day. This is America, we would say to ourselves, there is no need to worry. And we would be wrong.”

Each section of the book deals with a different theme. The first is the expectations of these women as they meet on the boat, in dire living conditions. Other sections cover their early lives as wives of farmers, servants, farm hands, tailors, etc.  Another section is about childbirth, their children, and eventually, the final sections deal with the bombing Pearl Harbor and how their lives as Japanese people are changed - their fear and expectations of being deported, and eventually being sent to the internment camps.