I have to admit that when I heard this book was Christian fiction, I wasn't terribly eager to read it. I prefer my fiction to be ripe with sexual escapades, mixed in with a few quality venial sins, and topped off with a healthy slew of profanity. I imagined that this book would be lacking in all of the above.
However, it wasn't lacking in much else. The first few pages of the prologue pulled me in, and I was thoroughly mesmerized throughout the 447-page novel.
Roseville writer Ann Tatlock describes the story of two young girls, Augusta Schuler and (Hatsune) Sunny Yamagata, who become best friends in California before the onset of World War II. Augusta, an Irish American finds a surrogate family with the Japanese household and eventually moves in with them. But after Pearl Harbor the Yamagata family is sent to an internment camp. The childhood friendship is broken off, but Augie and Sunny are unexpectedly reunited, as adults, during the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.
The interesting parallel between the two racist episodes in American history is brilliantly tied together, and All the Way Home has wonderfully woven tension and suspense. Tatlock even managed to throw in a romance, although a bit too tame for the non-avid Christian fiction fan.