Dorothy Linthicum Warner went to Japan at age 20 as the bride of an American missionary. She couldn't cook, sew, or speak Japanese, but she was in love and eager for each new adventure. During the pre-war years from 1932 to 1940, she wrote faithfully to her family in the United States describing her daily life. Sharing those letters home along with personal anecdotes, her daughter chronicles one family's history based on a storybook romance, marriage, raising a family, and a special bond with a foreign land. Forced to leave Japan by world events, her parents would find their lives forever linked to the Orient.