In The Heart Of The Valley Of Love

Cynthia Kadohata explores human relationships in a Los Angeles of the future, where rich and poor are deeply polarized and where water, food, gas, even education, cannot be taken for granted. There is an intimate, understated, 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.