Have just started to read for the second (third?) time George Crane's beautiful Bones of the Master: A Journey to Secret Mongolla. From the inside flap:
In 1959 a young Ch'an monk named Tsung Tsai (shown above) escapes the Red Army troops that destroy his monastery, and flees alone three thousand miles across a China swept by chaos and famine. Knowing his fellow monks are dead, himself starving and hunted, he is sustained by his mission: to carry on the teachings of his Buddhist meditation master, who was too old to leave with his disciple.
Nearly forty years later, Tsung Tsai persuades his neighbor in Woodstock, NY, maverick poet George Crane, to travel with him back to his birthplace at the edge of the Gobi Desert, find his master's grave, and plant the seeds of a spiritual renewal in China.
This book is a jewel.
[NOTE: Originally posted August 15, 2013].