August, 1945. Japan has just surrendered to the Allied forces after suffering such a devastating and horrific loss of life and sense of nationhood. Fire Flowers explores a post-war Japan and the many people from both sides tasked with rebuilding their lives.

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 U.S. photohjournalist, 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 collide and come together.

Cinematic, brutal, yet beautiful, Fire Flowers powerfully portrays the shock, the struggles, and the difficult choices that arise from the destruction of war.