I can't remember when an author used so few words to make me think about so much. Steinbeck was a master at his craft. Of Mice and Men makes you look at our desire to belong. Everyone's desire to reach out and touch something and be needed and belong to something that is their. And poor, poor, simple Lennie he just acted on that desire to "touch" and hold on to things more than people could "live" with.

Mamah was looking for "something." And there was Frank Lloyd Wright. They were very much alike and yet different in their intelligence. You slowly feel little by little the uncertainty that Mamah attempted to learn to live with. Mamah, who was considered loose I'm sure by her contemporaries, needed structure to feel comfortable; for who can raise a child without structure. Some might be tempted to put this book down before it ends, but trust me the last 100 pages are page turners. You feel that climax in the story coming like a speeding train. Can you handle it?

There is a lot of tragedy in a Geisha's life. But Golden has show us all that we have the power to control our response to what life throws at us. We can let life turn us bitter. We can try to run away from it. Or we can accept our fate and make the most of the life we are given.

You can read this book as a great epic story of a young girl learning to become a woman. Or you can read this book as a lesson plan in how we all can live our lives and help one another to be successful and achieve our goals.