Today I talked with Angela Davis-Gardner, an award-winning North Carolina-based novelist writing about Japan. Her book Butterfly’s Child (Random House, 2011) depicts the journey of a Japanese American boy Benji, who is plucked from the security of his home in Nagasaki to live with his American father, Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton, and stepmother, Kate, on their farm in Illinois. When the true that Benji’s true identity as a child born from a liaison between an officer and a geisha surfaces, Benji is set on a journey to uncover the truth about his mother’s tragic death. In this interview, Angela explains the conflicts, love, betrayal and redemption beautifully conceived and portrayed in her book.

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