A Monk Descends the Mountain, and a Hundred Ghosts Put Hearts to the Test

On the night rain sealed off the ferry crossing, a boat with no one at the oars made its way upstream to shore. Its lamp was still lit, and no one was aboard, yet wet footprints crossed the old home of the dead and stopped at the door of someone still alive. An unnamed monk only meant to cross the river, but he was drawn into an old case in which everyone was lying: the dead in the water were searching for someone to take their place, and the living on the shore had already chosen their victim. From a waterside ferry town to mountain villages, county funeral homes, a sinister academy, theater docks, and frontier garrisons, he encounters ghosts as he follows the traces his master left behind years ago. But he gradually discovers that the hardest souls to deliver from suffering are not always ghosts. They are people trapped by debt, reputation, desire, and silence.

This novel and its characters are entirely fictional. Any resemblance to actual events or people is purely coincidental. Do not imitate.