My husband and I decided to move from Minnesota to Tokyo with our two-year-old daughter when I was eight-months pregnant. We dreamed of exploration and adventure. Instead, I gave birth in a rundown Japanese hospital to a baby with multiple medical issues, and we were thrust into a cross-cultural medical nightmare.

Journey to Japan: A Life-Saving Memoir is helpless meets determination. It details the lengths we went to for our daughter so she could have the best chance in this world. Over the course of the narrative - and seven surgeries - we slowly watched her intricate little body get put back together until she was, finally, whole.

400 million people are affected globally by rare disease. Any parent who has had to fight for answers for themselves or their children will relate to my story. Travelers, those who have lived abroad, or have experienced tremendous strain on a marriage, will also immediately relate. At its heart, this memoir is about marriage, family, belonging, and what it means to find home in a foreign land.