Born Sakae Matsu’ura, Frank, the son of a samurai, is highly educated and speaks excellent English when he immigrates to Alaska in 1901. Sensing that his life there is threatened by false suspicions, he flees, eventually winding up in the frontier town of Okanogan, in the middle of Washington state. Frank was introduced to photography back in Japan, and his dream is to emulate his idol, Alfred Stieglitz, who pioneered photography as an art form. To keep body and soul together, he does all sorts of menial work, always uncomplaining, and faces the daily vituperation and humiliation that was inflicted upon many Asian immigrants in that time and place. Before leaving Japan, Frank was diagnosed with consumption; he breaks his resolve to remain unpartnered when the beautiful and wise Noriko—the woman he was betrothed to back in Japan until he broke it off when he got the diagnosis—arrives in town: “having seen Noriko again, a woman I had once promised to marry, I felt my solitude like a knife in my ribs.” After many setbacks, Frank finally establishes himself in Okanogan as a successful photographer. Noriko observes that as a portrait photographer, he is better—more sensitive and penetrating—than the revered Stieglitz. The consumption finally claims Frank, a man who never quite realized his own impact and worth, in 1913. Frank emerges from the narrative as a total human being—intelligent, wise, humorous, and, above all, principled. He’s always strenuously wrestling with his conscience, trying, for example, to reconcile his Christian faith with his service in the Sino-Japanese War. In an appended note, Sato explains how the book came to be and reveals facts about the real Frank Matsura. While the author notes that Noriko is a fictional character, he admits that, after Frank, she is his favorite, and readers will likely feel the same as she returns to Frank’s life as his godsend of a lover.