Love and Other Consolation Prizes by Jamie Ford

Do you remember the Seattle World’s Fair? If you were anywhere near Seattle in 1962, you knew about it and probably attended. What if that was your second World’s Fair? In this latest novel by Jamie Ford, his main character, Ernest Young, looks back at his first experience at the 1909 Seattle World’s Fair where, as a boy, he was a raffle prize. That event would change his life forever.

In 1902 a five-year-old half Chinese boy named Yung Kun-ai boarded a ship for America. Yung’s mother couldn’t care for him any longer and had sold him into an unknown future. He, along with other Chinese and Japanese children, traveled in the belly of a merchant ship destined to be sold when they arrive in America – if they survive the trip that is.

In 1962, Ernest’s daughter, Ju Ju, is an eager journalist with a Seattle newspaper. She has an assignment interviewing people who experienced both the 1909 and the current Seattle World’s Fair.

When Ju Ju talks with her mother, currently suffering from dementia, she learns that Ernest had been raffled off at the 1909 World’s Fair. This could be a great story and she is eager to uncover the details. Like any good journalist, she has done her homework. Ju Ju has an article from a newspaper in 1909 describing the raffling off of a young Chinese boy at the Fair. It was Ernest, wasn’t it?

Ernest knows he can’t dodge all his daughter’s questions; she is too smart to let him off the hook now that she knows even the small amount she does. But what can he share that doesn’t uncover long hidden family secrets. Secrets that might shock his grown daughters. He is particularly worried about the church ladies his wife considers her friends. What would they think? Secrets are better left buried, or are they? His wife may have unknowingly disclosed too much already.

Jamie Ford is a master of historical fiction and has set his novels in Seattle, making them very appealing to this local girl. If you are a fan of his work, please consider joining me at the Lincoln Theatre for An Evening with Jamie Ford, March 6 at 7:30 p.m. Tickets are available on the Lincoln Theatre website. This is a fundraiser for the Burlington and La Conner Library Foundations.