If You Follow Me — Malena Watrous

Hoping to outpace her grief in the wake of her father's suicide, Marina has come to the small, rural Japanese town of Shika to teach English for a year. But in Japan, as she soon discovers, you can never really throw away your past . . . or anything else, for that matter.

If You Follow Me is at once a fish-out-of-water tale, a dark comedy of manners, and a strange kind of love story. Alive with vibrant and unforgettable characters--from an ambitious town matchmaker to a high school student-cum-rap artist wannabe with an addiction to self-tanning lotion--it guides readers over cultural bridges even as it celebrates the awkward, unlikely triumph of the human spirit.