08/24/2016
Family is a crucial part of life, and we at Midgett Realty love nothing more than bringing families together on Hatteras Island. One night in a rented convention hall just isn’t enough time to catch up on everything you’ve missed out on in the past year(s) of your family’s lives. Try a week in a beautiful beach front home on Hatteras Island, and make memories that you’ll never forget and pass down traditions that will stay in your family for generations to come! Kids, grandbabies, aunts, uncles, cousins—come one, come all!
Traveling Hatteras Island in Your Sixties
Shops: Stop by Blue Pelican Gallery in Hatteras for a fun mix of jewelry, art and pottery for the homestead and a wide selection of knitting supplies perfect for some downtime at your rental home. Not into knitting? Take a stroll down through the shops at Hatteras Landing for some fun souvenirs and pick up some games that the whole family can take part in as well!
Eats: Perched on the docks of Teach’s Lair Marina, Hatteras Sol Waterside Grill has a delicious menu infused with the freshest ingredients. Local seafood, fresh herbs, handmade pastas, breads, sauces and more, local chef, Chris Setzer, knows food and has an ever-soaring reputation to prove it!
Drinks: There is nothing quite like drinks on the water as the sun sets over the Pamlico Sound. With a classically crisp environment, Breakwater Restaurant in Hatteras Village offers a peaceful bar nestled above Oden’s Dock. Long experienced in serving the patrons of Hatteras Island, they have a hand-picked wine selection and clean cocktail list that boasts knowledge, taste and sophistication.
Reads: Grab a read or two from our list of Top 10 Summer Beach Reads for 2016, and then grab a copy of Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet for the beach bag as well. Described as sentimental and heartfelt, it will be perfect for your trip to Hatteras Island!
In the opening pages of Jamie Ford’s stunning debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel, once the gateway to Seattle’s Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades, but now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol.
This simple act takes old Henry Lee back to the 1940s, at the height of the war, when young Henry’s world is a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who is obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While “scholarshipping” at the exclusive Rainier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship–and innocent love–that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. And after Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end, and that their promise to each other will be kept.
Forty years later, Henry Lee is certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko. In the hotel’s dark dusty basement he begins looking for signs of the Okabe family’s belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice–words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.
Set during one of the most conflicted and volatile times in American history, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet is an extraordinary story of commitment and enduring hope. In Henry and Keiko, Jamie Ford has created an unforgettable duo whose story teaches us of the power of forgiveness and the human heart.
-Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford
