Fire Flowers

In this "promising literary debut," three Japanese citizens and one American reporter rebuild their lives in the aftermath of Japan's WWII surrender ( The Independent).   Japan, 1945. The country has just surrendered to the Allied forces after suffering the devastation of nuclear warfare. Satsuko Takara and her teenage brother, Hiroshi, have lost both their parents, and each other, during the firestorm that devastated Tokyo five months before. Documenting the destruction of the war is Hal Lynch, a haunted US photojournalist, who stumbles upon a shocking story and is determined to bring it to light. And Osamu Maruki, a dissolute writer and once Satsuko's lover, has returned from the South Pacific a broken and changed man.   The war-torn streets of Tokyo come alive in this dazzlingly observed debut novel as the lives of these former enemies come together. Fire Flowers powerfully portrays the shock, the struggles, and the difficult choices that arise from the destruction of war.   "An impressive and nuanced account of a dark moment in history." — The Independent