Orchards

After a Japanese-American classmate commits suicide—partly, Kana suspects, because of the way Kana and her friends treated her—Kana's mother sends her to spend the summer with her grandparents in their mikan orange orchards in rural Japan. Told entirely in verse, the novel follows Kana as she processes her guilt, navigates the culture gap between her American identity and her Japanese heritage, and finds unexpected healing in the rhythms of orchard life: picking fruit, eating communal meals, and listening to her grandmother's stories.

Holly Thompson, who has lived in Japan for decades, writes with an insider's intimacy and an outsider's perspective, capturing the sensory details of rural Japanese life—the humidity, the cicadas, the smell of ripening oranges—with startling precision. The verse format gives each moment weight and space, turning a story about grief into something that reads like a meditation. Orchards is quiet, powerful, and lingers long after the last page.

Available at Popular bookstores, Kinokuniya, and the Singapore National Library.