Bamboo Secrets: One Woman's Quest through the Shadows of Japan - Softcover

Miller, Patricia Dove

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0997253908 ISBN 13: 9780997253900

Publisher: Illuminated Owl Press, 2016

Synopsis

Recognized as one of the Top Five Finalists in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards for 2017!
While living in Japan in 1993, Patricia Dove Miller's dream of a year of exploration and personal growth is shattered when her husband is detained on drug charges. Miller struggles with a sense of betrayal upon learning her husband's secrets and yet she stands by him, fighting to save both him and their marriage in the face of the terrifying uncertainties now confronting them. To save herself, she seeks refuge in two Japanese traditional arts--ikebana and shakuhachi (bamboo flute)--which not only nourish and strengthen her, but also lead her to finally discover, at age fifty-two, her life's passion: to become a writer. Bamboo Secrets: One Woman's Quest through the Shadows of Japan weaves together four strands: a mature woman in search of herself, a marriage in trouble, the dark side of Japan, and the beauty of Japanese art and culture.

About this title

About the Author

Patricia Dove Miller is a third-generation Californian, born and raised in the Berkeley hills. She has lived in the mountains outside of Cali, Colombia, in a tiny rice-farming village in North Thailand, and also at the edge of the northeastern hills in Kyoto, Japan. She attended Stanford University, and much later, at the age of sixty-six, completed her MFA in writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts. She is also an alumna of the Squaw Valley Community of Writers. She now lives with her husband in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada in Northern California, where she teaches creative writing and practices ikebana, shakuhachi, and Zen meditation.

From the Back Cover

Bamboo Secrets is a gripping, moving tale of loss, love, and tremendous human resilience. Miller's prose is honest and insightful and powerful.
-- Nina Schuyler, author of the award-winning novel The Translator

Patricia Dove Miller has woven for us a tapestry as shaded with nuance as the Japanese culture itself.
-- Christopher Noël, author of In the Unlikely Event of a Water Landing: A Geography of Grief

A painfully honest and harrowing tale of personal and cultural awakening.
-- Liza Dalby, anthropologist and author of Geisha, Kimono, The Tale of Murasaki, and Hidden Buddhas

Bamboo Secrets is a lovely series of nested boxes. You open the first lacquered square to find the story of a vastly unfortunate choice; you open that to journey with an expat through Japan; the next ones offer an abiding affection for that culture, with meditations on temples, pottery, futons, family, and the joys of flower arranging. Shimmering around the whole is how a marriage builds and lasts through adversity, and through it slides the haunting notes of the shakuhachi flute.
-- Sands Hall, author of Catching Heaven and Tools of the Writer's Craft

Edition details

• Publisher: Illuminated Owl Press
• Publication date: 2016
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0997253908
• ISBN 13: 9780997253900
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 332