National Network for Equitable Library Service

Part intellectual mystery and part spiritual adventure, A Year at River Mountain tells the story of an aging actor from Vancouver who has immersed himself in monastic life inChina and is now examining his past as an actor, husband,and father. As his Western consciousness grapples with Taoist philosophies and acupressure techniques, he assesses his life and records the struggles of transformation that accompanysuch thinking. The monastery’s Old Master has given the narrator permission to write the commentary he shares with us while raising the question of who reader and narrator really are. Kenyon balances the narrator’s interior life with hints of external disturbance and with purposeful missions outside the monastery where village unrest threatens the monks’ balance and harmony. Crises build as war threatens, floods occur, and a devastating event leads our narrator to a beautiful and surprising formulation of how things are.