Nora & Kettle : a paper stars novel
(Book)

What if Peter Pan was a homeless kid just trying to survive, and Wendy flew away for a really good reason? Desperate to run away, the world outside her oppressive brownstone calls to naive, eighteen-year-old Nora, the privileged daughter of a controlling and violent civil rights lawyer. But she is trapped, enduring abuse to protect her younger sister Frankie and wishing on the stars every night for things to change. A Japanese American orphaned at a young age and interned by the US government during the war, cautious, seventeen-year-old Kettle has had his share of adversity. But now that he has his hideout in an abandoned subway tunnel, a job, and his gang of Lost Boys, things are looking up. For months, they've lived side by side, their paths crossing yet never meeting. But when Nora is nearly killed and her sister taken away, their worlds collide when Kettle, grief stricken at the loss of a friend, angrily pulls Nora from her window. In her honeyed eyes, Kettle sees sadness and suffering. In his, Nora sees the chance to take to the window and fly away. Set in 1953, NORA AND KETTLE explores the collision of two teenagers facing extraordinary adversity. Kettle, an orphaned Japanese American, is struggling to make a life in the aftermath of an event in history not often referred to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the removal of children from orphanages for having one drop of Japanese blood in them. Nora, the daughter of a civil rights lawyer who is building a compensation case for the interned Japanese Americans, is barely surviving her violent home and dreams of a life outside of the brownstone walls. Their meeting is inevitable, devastating and ultimately healing. Their stories, a collection of events, are each on their own harmless. But together, one after the other, they change the world.