Receive this signed and personalized copy of the newly released My Year of Dirt and Water: Journal of a Zen Monk’s Wife in Japan by Tracy Franz, published by Stone Bridge Press.

When her American husband, a recently ordained Zen monk, leaves her behind to train for a year at a centuries-old Buddhist monastery, Franz embarks on her own year of Zen. A woman alone—and lonely—in Japan, she begins to pay attention.

My Year of Dirt and Water: Journal of a Zen Monk’s Wife in Japan is a record of that journey. Allowed only occasional and formal visits to see her cloistered husband, Tracy teaches English, studies Japanese, and devotes herself to making pottery. Her teacher instructs her to turn cup after cup—creating one failure after another. Past and present, East and West intertwine as Tracy is twice compelled to return home to Alaska to confront her mother’s newly diagnosed cancer and the ghosts of a devastating childhood.

Revolving through the days, Tracy's journal circles hard questions: What is love? What is art? What is practice? What do we do with the burden of suffering? The answers are formed and then unformed—a ceramic bowl born on the wheel and then returned again and again to dirt and water.

The New York Times says “Intriguing. . . Franz writes in elegantly understated journal entries, each with a satisfying heft, like a rustic wabi-sabi tea bowl.”

Originally from Alaska, Tracy Franz lived in Japan for ten years. Together with her husband—Soto Zen priest Koun Franz—and their two children, she now resides in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Her memoir, My Year of Dirt and Water: Journal of a Zen Monk's Wife in Japan, was published by Stone Bridge Press (July 2018).

Find her at www.tracyfranz.com