The Golden Gate: A Novel

Sullivan quizzes Miriam on vocabulary at his Berkeley home, but she once again expresses her desire to quit school and work to pay off her mother’s debt to Mickey. Isabella visits and brings Miriam books, including Anne of Green Gables. Isabella offers to secure Miriam a place at a boarding school with a full scholarship. She tells Sullivan that her grandmother got Yuko into a graduate program in Cornell University so that she could avoid internment, but Yuko is refusing to go and leave her old, ailing father behind. Isabella asks Sullivan to transport Yuko and her Japanese companions to safety in Nevada, saying that no one would think of checking a police officer’s car.

Sullivan agrees to help on the condition that Isabella has dinner with him afterward. He then drives the police van carrying Yuko and her family through redwood country toward Nevada. They successfully pass several police roadblocks during the journey. While traveling, Yuko shares her family’s experience with internment and the racism that forced them into hiding. Sullivan confesses his shame over his own participation in the internment raids.