[2] She received her bachelor's degree from Stanford University in international relations[3] with a focus on Africa and spent a summer during her studies volunteering with the YWCA in Ghana.

[3] After a brief job as an editorial assistant, Hirahara began working at the Rafu Shimpo newspaper in 1984, as a writer about the city of Los Angeles.

Three years later, she began working at a boutique public relations firm to allow more time for creative writing and taking classes at the UCLA extension.

[7] The book turned out to be the first of a series about an aging Japanese-American gardener, Mas Arai, a survivor of the atomic bomb, but the character was American-born.

Though he has a college degree, racial prejudice prevents him from obtaining other work, and he becomes a gardener, mirroring Hirahara's father's experience.

The new series features a young bicycle policewoman, Ellie Rush, who is the central character in Hirahara's seventh novel, Murder on Bamboo Lane.