Celebrating publication day (June 7th) and launch day (June 19th) – and have already had a lovely review of Across a Bridge of Dreams in the Independent!
Japan’s headlong rush towards modernity frames this tale of star-crossed love.
by Victoria James
Nearly a thousand years before Romeo met Juliet, Japan boasted its own pair of star-crossed lovers: the Weaver Princess and the Cowherd. Their passion is still celebrated during the yearly festival of Tanabata, when legend tells that innumerable magpies form a bridge across the Milky Way to enable the princess and her swain to meet.
The lovers in this engrossing new novel from geisha expert and historian Lesley Downer face a division almost as insuperable. Taka is the daughter of Japan’s most revered warlord and his geisha concubine; Nobu is her family’s servant. Her father heads the Satsuma clan of the southern island of Kyushu (yes, where the citrus fruit come from), risen to power after a brutal civil war; he is an Aizu from the defeated North.
Hi Lesley
I heard you speak (brilliantly) at/for the Japan Society recently, and was first in the queue to have my copy of ‘Across a bridge of dreams’ signed. I just finished it, cross with everything that interrupted my reading along the way……and am wishing I could hear your talk all over again. I’m sorry I hadn’t had to time to read it beforehand. Anyway, just a note to say thank you – marvellous, gripping & entertaining talk and a wonderful novel, weaving fact and fiction. SO relieved it didn’t quite end as I was beginning to suspect it might!
Thanks again, Trish.