My Year of Dirt and Water: Journal of a Zen Monk's Wife in Japan

Married to a Zen monk in training, an American woman in Japan chronicles her own year of growth and discovery

In February 2004, when her American husband, a recently ordained Zen monk, leaves home to train for a year at a centuries-old Buddhist monastery, Tracy Franz embarks on her own year of Zen. An Alaskan alone—and lonely—in Japan, she begins to pay attention.

My Year of Dirt and Water is a record of that journey. Allowed only occasional and formal visits to see her cloistered husband, ...