The House of the Misty Star

A bronze lantern above Ursula Priscilla Jenkins's door guides sailors home through the mist off Japan's Inland Sea. After thirty years teaching in Hijiyama, she has grown used to a quiet life and a house that offers shelter to all sorts of visitors. That routine changes when a student's letter sends her to help Jane Gray, an American missionary living in a dangerous district with too little food.

Frances Little tells this novel through Miss Jenkins's candid, often amused voice. Her concern for Jane opens into a wider account of friendship, religious differences and the wish for personal freedom. In a city preparing for a temple festival, Jenkins also tries to understand Zura, a young woman resisting the demands of a conservative household. Garden views, lanterns, ceremonial dress and sharp exchanges place these tensions in everyday scenes. Readers interested in stories of care across cultural boundaries will find a narrator whose sympathy keeps pressing against familiar assumptions.