This IIPY award winning novel, THE MYSTIC, reminds the reader that all human beings are on an individual journey. This story, appealing in its simplicity, is about a Canadian boy, a school dropout, named Dante who embarks on an odyssey from his home on an island off the west coast of Canada and travels to Japan and China in search of wisdom- secular and spiritual. Dante is unsettled. He yearns to know more about life. The young man wonders about truth and his calling. Along the path of his journey he meets a merchant, a Zen abbot, a hermit, an unscrupulous tycoon, a Taoist nun, a warrior, and a man called the Mystic. Dante experiences opportunity, danger, crisis, death, poverty, wealth, and love. He travels to countries with beliefs, rules, and rituals very different from those in his own country. Everything he knows is questioned and his story is the unfolding of the transforming power of travel, discovery, and freedom.