The story of the film centers on Irene Kawai, a Japanese American teenager in Chicago in the 1970s who is haunted by a photo of her grandfather she never knew standing by a barracks in a World War II internment camp for Japanese Americans.

Prompted by visits from the ghost of Terri, her dead baby sister, Irene journeys with her boyfriend Luke on a road trip to Arizona, where the Poston War Relocation Center once stood, and where the photo of her grandfather was taken.

How does that make you look at your family after that point?”[1]Strawberry Fields was filmed in Chicago, Illinois, and in California.

Critic Kevin Thomas of the Los Angeles Times called the film "very impressive...a tough-minded, idiosyncratic coming-of-age story".

[2] Variety was more critical, citing the film's "superficially sketched characters" and "hackneyed dialogue".