In 1930, a Filipino immigrant named Fermin Tobera was shot and killed by white men in Watsonville, California, an all-too-common and mostly unpunished hate crime in the US at a time when they weren’t even labeled as such. Randy Ribay uses this period and this murder as the starting point in his new young adult novel Everything We Never Had, which spans four generations of teenage boys in the fictional Maghabol family, covering major historical events in Filipino American history, including violence against Asian agricultural workers in California, labor organizing, exiles from the Marcos years, and anti-Asian hate crimes during the COVID pandemic.

Mariko Tatsumoto has made her name as a children’s author; her new book, Blossoms on a Poisoned Sea: A Novel of Love & Betrayal in Minamata, Japan, set during the 1956 industrial disaster, is suited for a more mature audience of adults and young adults. It’s a thrilling coming of age romance of a poor daughter of a fisherman family and a wealthy son of a corporate executive, one that probably resonates more than ever with contemporary readers after the recent pandemic.