Between Thoughts of You

Hospice nurse Lulua’ina, aka Lulu, has never had a patient quite like the old man. Pops, a 90-year-old Italian-American millionaire and founder of Fig Olive Oil, is near death in his Tuscan villa. He harbors a sixty-year-old secret. Lulu, being half Japanese-Hawaiian and half German, looks stunningly similar to the woman Pops cannot forget: Kiyomi, the daughter of a Japanese general he met and loved after World War II.

 

During three months together, lucid memories and dreams return to Pops. The old man can see, hear, smell, remember Kiyomi vividly again—and the broken promises he made to her. Regret overwhelms him. The old man’s dying wish to ask Kiyomi for her forgiveness, creates a wellspring of compassion within Lulu, who is heartbroken from betrayal and the loss of her infant daughter.

 Lulu befriends Pauli, Pops’s third son the antithesis of her estranged stoic husband. Playful Pauli makes Lulu laugh. Pauli sees Lulu in ways no one else has. He admires her strength and capable care of his father. He respects her innocence and courage. Days after Pauli realizes he loves Lulu, his father dies and Lulu returns to Oahu.

 

Still compelled by the old man’s unanswered longing, Lulu  goes to New York. She has found Kiyomi’s, and Pauli’s, family—as Kiyomi had been pregnant when Pops left her. Lulu can’t wait to tell Pauli about his father’s secret love, and his family in Tokyo. The odd friends reunite in Manhattan and spend a remarkable twenty four hours together. Lulu finds herself at a crossroads in her journey. Can she find the courage to love again? Or will she, like the old man, push aside true love to pursue a safer path instead?