As someone both who lives in and writes about intercultural marriage, I love this book. While many memoirs about this topic focus on the obvious external challenges and conflicts of adjusting to a foreign spouse and environment, Slater goes beyond the Cinderella story and delves into the internal issues of loving someone from another culture. An introverted feminist who is estranged from her own family, she falls in love with a Japanese salaryman and eventually moves to Kyoto to make a life there with him. There are predictable challenges because she and her husband-to-be come from very different sets of values and social customs, but as she grows to understand the culture and cares for her aging father-in-law, she learns the beauty of interdependence and Japanese customs. This is a quiet book of unfolding revelations about self and family that beautifully reflects the very real process of acculturation and the deeper appreciation that is possible after the "happy ever after."