Plum Rains

In a future Tokyo, Angelica Navarro is a Filipina nurse who has worked hard to get permission to live and work in Japan. She continually studies language and keeps her paperwork in order so she can stay. Her position as a private nurse for aging Sayoko Itou is threatened by the arrival of a caretaker robot, equipped with a high level of artificial intelligence. The nearly 100-year-old Sayoko becomes attached to the robot, Hiro, and tells him her secrets. Angelica is afraid she will lose her job to the robot, but she has bigger worries—her brother is ill, she has health issues, and she is in debt. At the well-publicized birthday party for Sayoko, Hiro and Sayoko embarrass the family, while Angelica flees with an unlikely companion. Romano-Lax (The Spanish Bow) creates a rather bleak vision of the future in which people are becoming endangered and robots have learned to think as well as to develop and show emotion, inspiring listeners to question the definition of humanity. Elizabeth Wiley performs the character voices admirably, developing Hiro's as the robot develops in the book.