Butterfly's Shadow

the long version

In Nagasaki, a fifteen-year-old tea-house girl prepares to welcome her client. Lieutenant Pinkerton approaches to find the female he¡s purchased for a few weeks. He sails away. She waits, aching for his return ... In America with his father and new stepmother, Joey is torn between two cultures. Each one is haunted by that fateful day, by a secret that, once revealed, will change everything. They struggle towards self-discovery amid the shifting perspectives of the twentieth century - the Depression, Pearl Harbor, the havoc of war. And then time stops in Nagasaki ... The deadly dust of the A-bomb settles and Joey finds his way back to the home of his memories, searching for traces of the mother who has for so long lived only in his dreams.