When Mikan Road Was Ours
By D.K. Furutani
Atria, July 2026, 320pp.

The Short of It:

Sincere in the telling. Poignant.

The Rest of It:

What initially caught my interest about this novel was the Los Angeles setting. I am a sucker for a Los Angeles story, so I snapped it up. When Mikan Road Is Ours is a heartbreaking novel in so many ways.

Mr. Murano is an English teacher battling a cancer diagnosis. He moves through his days mired in routine and boredom until he inherits his great-uncle Benjiro’s unpublished memoir. As a mixed Japanese American, he has no real desire to read it or learn more about his family. But at the urging of another family member, he reluctantly opens it and discovers a world he has spent years pushing aside.

The memoir offers a page-by-page account of the American concentration camps and the way his family’s simple life on a farm was upended by forced relocation and the loss of everything they owned. They endured horrible living conditions, hunger, and a lack of warmth. Once Mr. Murano learns his family’s history in such an intimate way, he can no longer ignore the truths that have been hidden from him.

This book makes a quiet but powerful statement about family and identity. We can choose to ignore the atrocities of the past, but they are still part of what makes us who we are. The Muranos hold family above everything else. Throughout their hardships, their goal remains the same: to keep the family intact.

In the light of the memoir, Mr. Murano experiences his own self-awakening. Against the backdrop of his health diagnosis, he begins to understand what it truly means to belong.

Recommend.

Source: Review copy provided by the publisher.
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