Edgar Award-winning author Naomi Hirahara has earned quite a reputation for producing stories that detail the Japanese experience in America. In her latest effort, CROWN CITY, which is set in Pasadena, California, in 1903, 18-year-old Japanese orphan Ryunosuke “Ryui” Wada is ready to reinvent himself as a Japanese art dealer’s apprentice.

The novel is sandwiched by two letters, sent in 1943 and 1945, which eloquently sum up Ryui and the life he made for his family in the US. The first is from Ryui to his daughter, Louise, as he describes his time at a Japanese internment camp in Arizona during WWII. This leads us to the story of his life and how he managed to get from Japan to the US. Born in Yokohama in 1885 to loving parents, Ryui learned the carpentry and woodworking trade from his father. Regrettably, he lost his parents in succession --- his mother from illness and his father due to a tragic workplace accident.

"CROWN CITY starts off unassumingly with plenty of well-depicted historical context and deep immersion into the Japanese expatriate experience in the US during the turn of the century. The letter that finishes the novel is cathartic and brings Ryui’s adventure in his new country full circle."

Ryui is given a rare opportunity to move to the US and work for two Australian brothers who did business with his father in Japan. They run a Japanese antiquities warehouse and shop in Pasadena. Upon arrival, Ryui learns that Pasadena --- nicknamed the “Crown City” --- is an up-and-coming area in southern California. He takes up residence near his new workplace at the Riley House, where he shares an apartment with other Japanese-born new Americans. His roommate is a somewhat irascible sort named Jack who fancies himself an amateur photographer.

Ryui is involved in a project to create a wood-based cherry blossom tree for the annual cherry blossom dinner hosted by local artist Toshio Aoki. He works the event as a server and is present when Mr. Aoki announces that one of his prized paintings has disappeared. Ryui swears his innocence and is a bit distracted by an incident that occurs on his way home when a masked individual on a bicycle throws a note at him that reads DIE JAP.

Mr. Aoki will stop at nothing to get his painting back and offers a finder’s fee to Ryui and Jack if they locate it and return it to him. Jack takes this offer to mean that they are now private investigators, and they spend much of their time outside of their respective jobs on the track of the missing artwork.

What begins as an innocent pseudo-PI job turns deadly fairly quickly when Ryui and Jack’s search leads in the direction of Jack’s previous roommate, an unsavory sort named Eddie Morita. When Eddie’s body is discovered, they recognize that they may be in way over their heads. It could not have come at a worse time for Ryui, who is just starting what might be his first romance with a Japanese girl who is also living at the Riley House.

CROWN CITY starts off unassumingly with plenty of well-depicted historical context and deep immersion into the Japanese expatriate experience in the US during the turn of the century. The letter that finishes the novel is cathartic and brings Ryui’s adventure in his new country full circle. I was particularly impressed by the Author’s Notes and Acknowledgements, where Hirahara outlines both the real and fictional characters who comprise her story.