After returning to the island for his mother’s funeral, Fa Yuan, a young monk, boards a ferry with a letter he may never open.
Beside him sits a familar and intriguing stranger who doesn’t speak much. Across the water, memories rise of a boy whose laughter was brighter than the banyan leaves, and whose silence carried more than anyone knew.
In the monastery where he once found refuge, he must confront the past he buried, the friend he could not save, and the compassion he is still learning to give to others, and to himself.
