SOURCE: "Future Imperfect: Los Angeles 2052," in Washington-Post, Aug 16, 1992, Sec. BW, p. 5.

In the following review, Smith praises the skillfully evoked atmosphere and the "finely wrought prose" of In the Heart of the Valley of Love.

Readers of Cynthia Kadohata's first novel, The Floating World, will recognize in her second the deadpan, slightly ironic voice of a female protagonist who describes her adventures in a strange, unpredictable environment with lyrical images that create the magical atmosphere—and the cool emotional distance—of a fairy tale. In the Heart of the Valley of Love's Francie is 19, while Olivia was 12 at the beginning of The Floating World, but the older selves who look back in the two books to examine their youth from some unspecified future date sound very much the same.

The pasts they consider, however, are radically different. Olivia and her family roamed across Arkansas and the Pacific...