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In 1957 Berkeley, California, Nobu Kimura runs a nursery with his older brother, Taro—until a hidden letter exposes a family secret and reopens old wounds left by his family’s internment. As Nobu wrestles with a renewed sense of betrayal, Taro, still haunted by wartime memories, confronts his own deepest fears when he learns he is about to become a father.

In Arkansas, their sister, Sachiko Kimura Baker, and her best friend, Jubie, watch nine Black students attempt to enter the newly desegregated Little Rock Central High School. The past collides with the present when Terrence Harris—a man who caused one of the Kimura family’s darkest moments—unexpectedly saves Sachiko and her daughter, forcing the family to reckon with old hatreds, buried truths, and the possibility of forgiveness.

In the midst of the family’s turmoil, their mother’s return from Japan brings revelations about the misunderstandings that have kept her away since the war’s end. Yet even as some of the family begins to heal, Nobu retreats further into a dangerous obsession with honor, shame, and revenge—a spiral that threatens to shatter the family.

Set in the aftermath of Japanese American internment and against the rising heat of the civil rights movement, Shadow of the White Chrysanthemum continues the Kimura family saga that began with Jan Morrill’s The Red Kimono and explores the bonds that hold a family together—and the secrets that threaten to break them apart.