Book - Songs Of Willow Frost

Songs of Willow Frost

by Jamie Ford

"Twelve-year-old William Eng, a Chinese-American boy, has lived at Seattle’s Sacred Heart Orphanage ever since his mother’s listless body was carried away from their small apartment five years ago. On his birthday—or rather, the day the nuns designate as his birthday—William and the other orphans are taken to the historical Moore Theatre, where William glimpses an actress on the silver screen who goes by the name of Willow Frost. Struck by her features, William is convinced that the movie star is his mother, Liu Song.

Determined to find Willow, and prove his mother is still alive, William escapes from Sacred Heart with his friend Charlotte. The pair navigates the streets of Seattle, where they must not only survive, but confront the mysteries of William’s past and his connection to the exotic film star. The story of Willow Frost, however, is far more complicated than the Hollywood fantasy William sees onscreen.

Shifting between the Great Depression and the 1920s, Songs of Willow Frost takes readers on an emotional journey of discovery. Jamie Ford’s sweeping book will resonate with anyone who has ever longed for the comforts of family and a place to call home."       summary & image

I’m going to try to remember to look at the back of a book for notes from the author – before I start reading page 1. It would have been helpful to have that information in mind for the last few books that I’ve read.

This book might not be as well written as the author’s first book, “Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet.” The writing style seems uneven at times but I found the story very interesting. Both books are set in Seattle and deal with characters with Chinese ancestry. Jamie Ford’s father is Chinese American. Ford tells the story of the city and culture of his ancestors. I like reading about Seattle’s history. I find it interesting but sad to read about children and different ethnic groups and the injustices that are too often heaped upon them.

Single mothers often face daunting challenges – especially when the children they bear are a result of abuse by a family member. Child care, working, and all aspects of life are difficult. Sometimes mothers make choices that seem unfair and/or are misunderstood by the child. William’s mother put him in an orphanage. Was that the “right” thing to do? Was the head of the orphanage “right” in not sharing the mother’s letters with William? What’s right and what’s wrong in these complex situations? How do our culture, religion, and beliefs affect our decisions?

In one scene Liu Song, a singer, is invited to a swanky Seattle mansion to sing for “Settle’s royalty.” Because she’s a singer and because she’s Chinese, she is deemed not worthy to eat with the people she’s been invited to entertain. She and her escort are served a very nice dinner – in the servants’ dining room which has been fancied up for the occasion. This reminded me of a “Downton Abbey” episode in which there was great consternation about what to do with a famous Australian singer who had been invited to perform for Downton Abbey’s owners and guests. The butler, Carson, ever vigilant about what is and isn’t proper – upstairs and downstairs, feels she isn’t worthy to eat with the Duchess, Duke, Lord and Lady, and whomever upstairs. His solution was to serve her dinner in her room – then she could come down to entertain. Lady Grantham, an American whose money saved Downton Abbey when she married Lord Grantham, isn’t quite so taken with British ideas of what’ proper. She orders that the singer dine with them and be seated next to Lord Gratham. Lord Grantham’s reply to his wife when he heard her ultimatum, “What does one say to a singer?”

How can we think we are inherently better than any other person or group of people? We are all children of God.

William and his experiences in the orphanage and his search for his mother – family and love and belonging - resonated with me because of Joe’s two years in a military school, grades 6-7 – about the same age as William in the book. Joe’s parents divorced and were in situations in which they felt Joe could not be with them. Both sets of grandparents were taking care of other grandchildren whose parents for various reasons could not care for them – so Joe went off to military school. Joe often tells about the other boys in the school and why they were there - parents in various parts of the world due to World War II; parents who had essentially parked and abandoned their children; parents whose choices made it difficult for them to take care of their own children; children whose parents had died – there were all sorts of reasons the boys ended up in the military school. The food might have been better in military school, but some of the living conditions weren’t all that much better than orphanage conditions described in the book. Joe and the boys at Howe, just like William and the boys and girls at the orphanage, had to decide how they were going to deal with the choices their families had made. After Joe refused to return to military school the third year, he lived in rooms with his mother and father in various cities. He essentially was on his own because his parents were working days and evenings. He never recovered what he and others would call the “normal” family life of a child.

Joe had to make choices and decisions about how he could and couldn’t count on the adults who were supposed to take care of him; the meaning of family; what he had to do for himself; and so forth. Joe came face to face with these complexities and realities at a very young age – much too young.                    (told with Joe's assistance)