Derek Chandler had it all-the education, the promising future, the beautiful wife-but a tragic accident changed everything and his life now stands in ruins. Haunted by the ghosts of what might have been, Derek tries to lose himself in his new job, but what begins as a minor academic mystery soon unravels, leaving him with the burden of a second truncated life: that of long-vanished science fiction writer, Kichiro Nakamura. Convinced that finding Kichiro is somehow the key to finding his own peace, Derek is drawn into a frantic search of modern and post-war Los Angeles as he tries to reconstruct the shattered kaleidoscope of American and Japanese cultures. And the key to everything just might be the beautiful-and very suspicious-tattoo artist, Yuki Kamikaze.