In the Heart of the Valley of Love [Paperback]

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 writingthis is not an apocalyptic dystopiathat makes it difficult to shrug off the version of the future embodied in her book.

Cynthia Kadohatais the author of the novelThe Floating World. Her short stories have appeared inThe New YorkerandGrand Street. She is the recipient of a 1991 Whiting Writers Fellowship and lives in Los Angeles.