The author uses the backdrop of a historical incident, the fiery, fatal crash of a B-24 Liberator during a flight between Okinawa and the Philippines in the mountains above a Taiwanese village, to take readers through the everyday lives of story characters into a period of time far removed from “normal”. Here, long-practiced habits and emotions hint at the deep, inner wounds pushed to the fore by the recently ended Pacific War. Here, the normal and abnormal grind against one another, creating a cauldron of feelings difficult to put into words yet brought to a head by the plane crash. Author Chu He-Chih’s circuitous narrative turns this creative story into a puzzle that, once finished, lets readers mingle with long-departed friends in that brief span of historical time. Relationships, folk ways, contemporary mores, and fate intertwine in the brief window after the war in Taiwan when neither Japan nor the Allies were in charge.