Cynthia Kadohata's In the Heart of the Valley of Love (published in 1997) is a quasi science-fiction novel that is set in Los Angeles in the year 2052. The novel follows the protagonist, Japanese-African American Francie, an orphan whose parents have died of cancer when she was thirteen. She suspects they were exposed to some chemical, but she nevertheless considers herself lucky to be taken care of and employed by her Aunt.

Francie is raised by her aunt, Annie, whose rather unsavory boyfriend, Rohn, smuggles electronics on the black market. At the novel's outset the group is traveling through the Mojave Desert, where they are stopped but let go when Rohn bribes the policeman. Rohn is later trapped by the authorities and taken away. Francie and her aunt continue to live at a motel, for which her aunt makes deliveries. The Los Angeles described in the novel features a shortage of gas, food, and water, which are rationed to the (overwhelmingly poor) population.

Following Rohn's arrest, Francie is then enrolled in a community college, where she meets Mark, who becomes her boyfriend, and Jewel, who is dating a man who abuses her. Mark is a good partner for the well-intentioned but aimless Francie. They get tattoos together to affirm their commitment to iconoclasm. Soon, a student from their school, Matt Burroughs, is accused of murder and Mark and Francie seek to defend him; however, it turns out that Matt is most likely guilty, as he disappears.

The group makes a sort of pilgrimage to a spot known to Jewel's father and grandfather, where they find a box that reveals the name of her father's secret mistress. Mark, France, and Jewel put their names and the names of those close to them in the box, as a means of perpetuating the time capsule and giving themselves a permanent, if artificial, place in such a vast city.