Fire flowers

the long version

"August, 1945. Japan has been defeated in the Second World War. The country lies in ruin. Satsuko Takara and her teenage brother Hiroshi have lost their parents, and each other, during the firestorm that devastated Tokyo. Hal Lynch, a haunted U.S. reconnaissance photographer, is now a photojournalist in Japan, where he stumbles upon a shocking story and is determined to bring it to light. And Osamu Maruki, a dissolute writer and Satsuko's former lover, has returned from the South Pacific a broken and changed man. As these people's stories converge and spin outward, the war-torn streets of Tokyo come alive in this dazzlingly observed novel. Cinematic, brutal, yet beautiful, Fire Flowers powerfully portrays the shock, the struggles, and the difficult choices that arise from the destruction of war"--Page 2 of cover.