The 12 travelers include Harry, a divorced British dog trainer now famous for his television show, 'The Fido Files.' He lusts after Marlena Chu, a Shanghainese professional art curator who grew up in Sao Paulo and attended the Sorbonne. Murder? Even all-seeing phantom Bibi doesn't know.Īt the open-casket funeral, 10 days after her death - 'and without preservation I would have been compost,' she notes - the group of friends learns that Bibi failed to obtain travel insurance but decides not to cancel the Burma trip.

Unfortunately, only two weeks before the departure date, 63-year-old Bibi suffers a mysteriously violent death. When alive, this San Francisco socialite, antiques dealer and art patron had put together 'Following Buddha's Footsteps,' an adventurous expedition from China to Burma, a journey of 1,000 miles, to view 1,000 years of Buddhist art. Though the travelers veer off course, our trusty narrator - a deliciously outspoken ghost named Bibi Chen - provides a running commentary on their every move.

'Saving Fish From Drowning,' a modern twist on a 'A Midsummer's Night Dream'-style yarn, follows the travails of a group of art-loving friends who journey from San Francisco to Burma only to get lost in the jungle on Christmas morning and bizarrely entangled in a refugee tribe's ancient prophesy. An intoxicating air of romantic folly haunts much of the action in Amy Tan's latest novel.

Saving fish from drowning