Cherry Blossom

Fifth Grade teacher, Dick Hammer, feels a profound connection with one of his students. Danilee Kindle is bright,willful, and needy. "A potent mix." The more time he spends with the abandoned girl, and the closer they get, the more scrutiny and disapproval Dick feels from his colleagues, his principal, and his wife.

Fifth Grade teacher, Dick Hammer, feels a profound connection with one of his students. Danilee Kindle is bright,willful, and needy. "A potent mix." The more time he spends with the abandoned girl, and the closer they get, the more scrutiny and disapproval Dick feels from his colleagues, his principal, and his wife. As a forty-seven-year-old, first-year teacher, Dick staggers at the need he finds behind the gates at Cherry Blossom Elementary. He commits himself to educating, nurturing, and protecting every child. When a sexual molester and a murderer enter the sphere of the classroom, Dick rushes his star pupil from danger. He heads toward the border, crossing a line from which he can never return.

Richard Diedrichs grew up in the L.A.'s San Fernando Valley. He edited and wrote for magazines in Seattle, worked as an editor at UC Berkeley, and taught Fourth and Fifth Grades, and Kindergarten, in public elementary schools around the east San Francisco Bay Area. He lives with his wife on the west coast of the Big Island of Hawaii.