In 1922, the New Zealand writer Katherine Mansfield was on the verge of literary celebrity. She was the friend of Virginia Woolf and D. H. Lawrence, and her remarkable stories were changing the way people thought about the form. But she was also deeply unhappy in her marriage to John Middleton Murry and she was dying of tuberculosis. When she abandoned the nomadic life of an invalid in search of the ideal climate and put herself in the hands of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, she was taking a step into the unknown. A mystic of Greek and Armenian parentage, Gurdjieff had traveled extensively among esoteric communities in the East before he fled the Revolution in Russia and established himself as a teacher in France. His Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man occupied the Prieuré de Basse Loges, a magnificent chateau in the woods of Fontainebleau. When Katherine Mansfield left Paris to live at the Prieuré, she ceased to write in her celebrated Journal. Taking up where the Journal leaves off, A Child of the Sun follows the course of Mansfield's inner life at the Prieuré, recounting her meetings with the remarkable people who had gathered about Gurdjieff: the editor and critic Alfred Orage; Olgivanna Hinzenberg, future wife of Frank Lloyd Wright; P. D. Ouspensky, whose books introduced Gurdjieff to the West. Mansfield is at first put off by Gurdjieff's rough and ready manner, and his offhand treatment of his students. But as her understanding of his method grows and as her physical condition deteriorates she experiences his great compassion and perceives the possibility of attaining the inner freedom that has eluded her throughout her life. Butler's (A Riddle of Stars) ode to a once-blossoming author, an imaginative epistolary account based on the turn-of-the-20th-century historical record, chronicles Katherine Mansfield's final months. Butler, professor of writing and literature at Bentley University, enters the mind of Katherine through her journal as she searches for inner peace while succumbing to the realities of tuberculosis. Under the instruction of George Ivanovich Gurdjieff, who runs the Institute for the Harmonious Development of Man south of Paris, Katherine longs for a deeper understanding of life and her part in it. Tired of feeling like a burden to those around her including her husband and her longtime friend Ida Katherine hopes Gurdjieff's influence may help her recuperate enough to start a new life. She learns much from her new relationships, including patience from a dancer, compassion from a young Lithuanian girl, and a deep level of support and understanding from an old friend and mentor. Never able to have a child of her own, she grows especially close to a young boy, Patrick; he gives her the opportunity to feel the kind of love she never had from her own parents, bringing her a joy and contentment she didn't think was possible. More than just a retelling of Katherine's emotional struggles and deteriorating health, the novel illuminates the teachings of the Institute: to accept all forms of the self, put others first, feel empathy for all types of human suffering, and forgive and accept the past. --Publisher's Weekly : Pierce Butler was born in Waterford City, Ireland. He is the author of two other novels: A Malady, and A Riddle of Stars., and numerous short stories and essays. He has worked with Fourth Way groups in Massachusetts for 30 years. Pierce also practices in the Solo Zen tradition and leads meditation groups for inmates of the Massachusetts prison system. He teaches writing and literature at Bentley University and lives in Waltham, Massachusetts with his wife, Susan Holbert.