"Viking."

Includes bibliographical references (p. [419]-420)

Nao Yasutani is a Japanese schoolgirl who plans to kill herself as a way of escaping her dreary life. First, though, she intends to write in her diary the life story of her great-grandmother Jiko, a Zen Buddhist nun. But Nao actually ends up writing her own life story, and the diary eventually washes up on the shore of Canada's Vancouver Island, where a novelist called Ruth lives. Ruth finds the diary in a freezer bag with some old letters in French and a vintage watch and begins to investigate how the bag traveled from Japan to her island, and why it contains what it does.