Chapter One, The Case of Isobe Summary

In Deep River, four Japanese people of different backgrounds and different sorrows converge at the holy Ganges River in India, on their own personal journeys to reconcile themselves with their pasts. Isobe is a taciturn man left desolate by the death of his wife and searching for her reincarnated soul. Kiguchi, a former Japanese soldier who endured torturous hunger and illness in Burma during World War II, mourns the wartime friend who saved his life, but suffered and died because of his guilt. Numada, a children's author whose only true friends have been animals and birds, seeks to repay the help of a myna bird. Mitsuko, an atheistic woman whose life has been without love, seeks her college lover, a failed Catholic priest working among the impoverished. All four find some solace in...