A New York Times Bestseller -- In a tour de force of economy and precision, Julie Otsuka tells the story of a group of young women brought from Japan to San Francisco as "picture brides" nearly a century ago. Eight incantatory sections trace the brides' extraordinary lives from their arduous journey and tremulous first nights as new wives, to their backbreaking work and struggles in a new culture, to raising children who will ultimately reject their heritage, to the arrival of war.