Seeking a new life in nineteenth-century California with his samurai father, a young Japanese finds it difficult to adjust to the idea of being a farmer and not a samurai.
When twelve-year-old Rinko learns that a neighbor's daughter is coming from Japan to marry a stranger twice her age, she sets out to change this arrangement and gains new insights into love and adult problems.
At first dismayed at having to spend the last month of her summer vacation helping out in the household of recently widowed Mrs. Hata, Rinko discovers there are pleasant surprises for her, but then bad things start to happen.
Eleven-year-old Rinko grows up in a closely-knit Japanese American family in California during the Depression where she experiences a great deal of prejudice and indifference.
