One family helps another through a troubled time, which means to young Rinko that she has to spend the summer of 1935 in East Oakland with widowed Mrs. Hata and her two pesky sons. Three personal life styles, each true to Japanese-American culture in that decade, are pictured in a novel which continues the family story begun in the book A JAR OF DREAMS. (Ages 9-13)

At first dismayed at having to spend the last month of her summer vacation helping out in the household of recently widowed Mrs. Hata, Rinko discovers there are pleasant surprises for her, but then bad things start to happen. Sequel to A Jar of Dreams..