On Day Three of Canada Reads 2018, Jeanne Beker, defending Forgiveness by Mark Sakamoto, took time to share her personal connection to the story. She drew parallels between her parents' experiences as Holocaust survivors and that of Sakamoto's grandparents during the Second World War.

"My personal story is involved in this story because I am a child of Holocaust survivors. My mother was born in 1920, the exact same year Mark Sakamoto's own grandmother was born. My parents survived the war in Poland as Jews running from the Nazis. They painted nothing but dark pictures for me as a child growing up, telling me about their war experiences. I hid under the bed because I didn't want to hear anymore."

Beker, however, added that these kinds of stories, albeit dark, can teach us a lot.

"It is these stories that make us who we are and it is these stories we can glean so much from. And because this is a memoir, Mark Sakamoto's book tells the true story of two living, breathing people."