Cynthia Kadohata explores human relationships in a Los Angeles of the future, where rich and poor are deeply polarized and where water, food, and gas, not to mention education, cannot be taken for granted. There is an intimate, understated, even gentle quality to Kadohata's writing—this is not an apocalyptic dystopia—that makes it difficult to shrug off the version of the future embodied in her book.

Cynthia Kadohata is the author of the novel The Floating World. Her short stories have appeared in The New Yorker and Grand Street. She is the recipient of a 1991 Whiting Writers Fellowship and lives in Los Angeles.

"Kadohata manages with lean, uncomplicated prose to tell a remarkable story of love and redemption, with characters who are credible and sympathetic."—James Idema, Chicago Tribune

"Kadohata is masterful in her evocation of physical, spiritual and cultural displacement. . . . The message of this marvelous though often painful book is that our capacity to feel deep emotion—our own and others'—just might bind us together, and save us from ourselves."—Susan Heeger, Los Angeles Times Book Review

"Kadohata's finely wrought prose creates haunting pictures."—Wendy Smith, Washington Post Book World