At first glance, Scion Sasaki is a normal twenty-one-year-old. He attends university in Vancouver, deejays parties at night, and aspires to someday become a chef. But Scion has responsibilities that run over twenty generations deep: He is destined to become the next head monk of his family’s Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan, and he’ll have to take over the eight-century-old place of worship before he turns thirty. Over winter break, Scion returns to Kyoto and re-immerses himself in temple life, meeting with community members and practicing rituals. But the temple is at a crossroads—the new generation is less interested in tradition than the generation before them. As Sasaki grapples with the pressures of this inherited responsibility and the place he occupies at the intersection of East and West, he must turn, ultimately, to the support of his family.  EM