G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS

An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC, New York

Copyright © 2020 by Sherri L. Smith

Map illustration copyright © 2020 by Maggie Edkins

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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Names: Smith, Sherri L., author.

Title: The blossom and the firefly / Sherri L. Smith.

Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, [2020]

Summary: Told in two voices, seventeen-year-old kamikaze pilot

Taro and fifteen-year-old war worker Hana meet

in 1945 Japan, he with no future and she haunted by the past.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019005509 | ISBN 9781524737900 (hc) |

ISBN 9781524737917 (ebook)

Subjects: LCSH: World War, 1939–1945—Japan—Juvenile fiction. | CYAC: World War, 1939–1945—Japan—Fiction. | Kamikaze pilots—Fiction. | Musicians—Fiction. |

Family life—Japan—Fiction. | Japan—History—1926–1945—Fiction.

Classification: LCC PZ7.S65932 Blo 2020 | DDC [Fic]—dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005509

ISBN 9781524737900

This is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical figures, are products of the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical persons appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

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