A Year at River Mountain

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 in China and is 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 accompany such thinking.

Kenyon balances the narrator’s interior life with hints of external disturbance and with purposeful missions outside the monastery. Village unrest threatens the monks’ balance and harmony; the nightmarish rape of a village woman uncovers a trapdoor to chaos; travel over the mountain conjures a snow leopard in a blizzard-choked pass; and a trip to the city to find a prophet changes time forever.