How Much Do You Love Me Blog Tour

Welcome to the blog tour for How Much Do You Love Me? by Paul Mark Tag!

Lovers James and Keiko marry quickly before James goes to World War II and Keiko to an internment camp. Sixty years later their daughter Kazuko, born in the camps, uncovers a secret that could overwhelm the family. Discover the very definition of human love and self-sacrifice in this saga of war, mystery, and romance.

Paul Mark Tag graduated with multiple degrees in meteorology from Pennsylvania State University and worked for the Naval Research Laboratory as a research scientist for over thirty years before retiring to write fiction. For years prior to retirement, and the following year exclusively, he honed his skills writing short stories. These have been published in StoryBytes, Potpourri, Green’s Magazine, and The Storyteller, as well as The Errant Ricochet: Max Raeburn’s Legacy.In 2005, he self-published his first thriller, Category 5,which took advantage of his knowledge of meteorology and weather modification, followed by Prophecy and White Thaw: The Helheim Conspiracy. With his historical novel How Much Do You Love Me? he has switched genres. He lives with his wife, Becky, in Monterey, California.

Review:

The Tanaka family works hard and appreciate all the opportunities they've been given. The father, Isamu, moved to the United States looking for work. He eventually acquired a picture bride, Akemi, and they raised a wonderful family of 4 children. After the bombing of Pearl Harbor though, everything began to change. Freedoms they had taken for granted suddenly seemed taken away from them. People began to question their loyalty. The Japanese living in the US were soon forced to leave everything they had and live in camps. Daughter Keiko has fallen in love with someone who is not Japanese, and so she hurries and marries him before he leaves for for war. Meanwhile, in the present, Keiko's two children are dealing with their mother's illness. A mysterious stranger come to visit, and Shizuka and Patrick begin to learn all about the past their parents tried to hide. What they learn changes everything.

I was very interested in this book. The internment camps during World War II are an awful part of our history that I feel we often try to forget. This book was an excellent reminder of a past that should never be repeated. Mixed in with the stories of life in the camp is a story of Keiko Tanaka Armstrong's two children. Their mother is at the end of her life, and her children are finding out things they never knew about their family. Something doesn't seem quite right though, and as Shizuka works to unravel the mystery, things become even stranger than she had imagined.

I actually guessed the resolution to the mystery then thought I must be wrong because it was kind of out there. Turns out I was correct! It made for a very sad ending though. I wanted to give everyone involved more time to work through things, but that was not to be. There is a little romance, a little mystery, and a lot of history in this book. The jumping back and forth from past to present wasn't too jarring for me, so that helped me to enjoy the book. Sometimes I did want to skip ahead though as the stream of one part of the story was sometimes interrupted to get to the other part of the story. This was an enjoyable book to read though. History buffs and people interested in the treatment of the people in internment camps should definitely read this book.

Book provided for review.