Can a shattered romance trigger so drastic a displacement? Am I fleeing something, as others alleged? Or-antithesis be damned-am I running to something, specific and assured? The Untethered Kite tells the story of how a middle-aged man, widowed at thirty, and with the demanding years of single-parenting now behind him, forsook his home, his job, and casting complacency aside, rose from the despair of a broken engagement to search for love and happiness in China, an upheaval as uncertain, as haphazard, but as potentially uplifting as a kite set adrift from its string.