Candle In The Wind is by Maureen Wartski. The story is about a 15 year old Japanese American girl named Terri Mizuno whose brother, Harris Mizuno was shot dead by an elderly white man. The man shot Harris because he mistakened him for an intruder when Harris asked to use his phone because his car had stalled. After Harris' death, Terri had to keep her family together and take charge because her family was falling apart in anger and grief over his death. Supremist groups emerged in the town that the story takes place (Whiteriver, Massachusetts) which resulted in an eruption of bigotry, vigilantism, and hatred. One of the supremist groups was the brotherhood of the SAW (a skinhead supremacist group). The SAW launch attacks of vandalism, hate grafitti, and attacks targetted towards Asian families. The second supremist group is the APU (Asian Power through Unity), a militant Asian group formed in retaliation against the SAW. Terri realized that she must reveal the light of understanding and reasoning on Whiteriver and she found help in the form of her grandmother (Obaachan). Obaachan arrived to Whiteriver from Japan. A peace march was organized with the hope of decreasing the amount of violence but the opposite happened when members of the SAW and APU met at Boston Common. It was in this hostile atmosphere that Obaachan spoke to the crowd regarding why hatred and violence are enemies with everyone. She said that her grandson's death is no excuse for hate groups to hurt other people. Terri had an essay about peace and Obaachan urged her to read it to the crowd. It was then realized that violence was not the answer. Terri then understood that Harris' spirit will always be with her and her family and this drew the family closer again.

Candle In The Wind is a great book. It teaches about forgiveness, family, bias, and the negativity of violence and hatred. The book is well written and very emotional. For these reasons, I give the book 5 out of 5 stars. I recommend this bbok to those people who enjoy books that teach many lessons about everyday society. ( )