In 1959 a young monk named Tsung Tsai (Ancestor Wisdom) escapes the Red Army troops that destroy his monastery, and flees alone three thousand miles across a China swept by chaos and famine. Knowing his fellow monks are dead, himself starving and hunted, he is sustained by his mission: to carry on the teachings of his Buddhist meditation master, who was too old to leave with his disciple.

Nearly forty years later Tsung Tsai -- now an old master himself -- persuades his American neighbor, maverick poet George Crane, to travel with him back to his birthplace at the edge of the Gobi Desert.

They are unlikely companions. Crane seeks freedom, adventure, sensation. Tsung Tsai is determined to find his master's grave and plant the seeds of a spiritual renewal in China. As their search culminates in a torturous climb to a remote mountain cave, it becomes clear that this seemingly quixotic quest may cost both men's lives.


Author: George Crane
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: Bantam
Published: 05/29/2001
Pages: 320
Weight: 1lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.10w x 0.80d
ISBN: 9780553379082

About the Author
George Crane is a poet as well as a translator of poems from the Chinese (A Thousand Pieces of Snow, co-authored with Tsung Tsai). He lives in upstate New York. Bones of the Master is his first nonfiction work.