List $39.95

Written by Ellis Avery - Performed by Barbara Caruso - Unabridged Fiction - 15 COMPACT DISCS - 18.5 hours

Publisher, HighBridge Audio (January 2007)

Listen to an MP3 audio clip.

"A sensuous, luminously written adventure flavored with history and steeped in culture." —Susan Jane Gilman

When nine-year-old Aurelia Bernard takes shelter in Kyoto's Baishian teahouse after a fire one night in 1866, she is unaware of the building's purpose. She has just fled her only family: an abusive missionary uncle on assignment to Christianize Japan.

Mistaken for the abandoned daughter of a prostitute, Aurelia is taken in by the Shin family. She becomes the attendant and surrogate younger sister of Shin Yukako, daughter of Kyoto's most important tea master and one of the first women to openly practice the Way of Tea. For hundreds of years, women have been barred from this sacred ceremonial event; now, as Japan opens its doors to the West, women must save it. From her privileged position, Aurelia aids in Yukako's crusade to preserve the tea ceremony and the cultural identity it once embodied. And Aurelia herself survives, overcomes, and finds her path in a world that does not welcome outsiders.

About the Author: ELLIS AVERY studied Japanese tea ceremony for five years in New York and Kyoto. Her work has appeared in the Village Voice, Kyoto Journal, and Pacific Reader, as well as onstage at New York's Expanded Arts Theater. She lives in New York City and teaches creative writing at Columbia University.

About the Performer: Barbara Caruso is an American graduate of the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. She enjoys a rich acting career which has included Broadway, off Broadway, and many theaters across the country. On those stages she has performed in plays by Shakespeare, Chekov, Williams, O’Neil, and Neil Simon, to name but a few.

Spoken word audio is an important part of that career. Her countless recordings include the works of Edith Wharton, Margaret Atwood, Maeve Binchy, Louisa May Alcott, Willa Cather, and children’s classics. AudioFile magazine has chosen her one of their Voices of the Century. She’s won numerous Earphones Awards, including for her narration of The Year of Magical Thinking (an Audie® Award finalist) and The House of Scorta, both published by HighBridge. She is the recipient of the Alexander Scourby Award, presented by the American Foundation for the Blind.