Thirteen-year-old Satomi Baker is used to being different. It is 1939 and being half-white, half-Japanese on the west coast of California gets you noticed. Although she has never felt she quite fits in, her striking looks have caught the eye of the most popular boy at school. When war is declared, Satomi's father Aaron is sent to the base at Pearl Harbor. He never returns. Now the community that has tolerated its foreign residents for decades suddenly turns on them, and along with thousands of other Japanese-American citizens Satomi and her mother are sent to a brutal labour camp in the wilderness.

At Manzanar Satomi learns what it takes to survive, who she can trust, and what it means to be American. But it will be years before she will discover who she really is under the surface of her skin. A Girl Like You is her story, and the riveting and moving story of a lost generation.