Sanae Kawaguchi, also known as Sanae Moorehead, was born in California of Japanese immigrant parents and lived through the evacuation of the Japanese from the West Coast during WWII. How the family escaped incarceration by "voluntarily" moving to Utah was the basis of her novel, "A Time Of Innocence" based on her experiences, but fictionalized to include the larger scope of the Japanese experience of the Japanese-Americans at the time. Going against strict parental cultural mores, as a teenager, she ran away to New York to study with Martha Graham. After eight years, a severed Achilles tendon ended her dance career and she went on to write and illustrate two children's books, "Taro's Festival Day" and "The Insect Concert", published by Little, Brown. She wrote and illustrated educational materials for such companies as Doubleday Multimedia, Random House, Walt Disney Educational, and illustrated several Newbery Award filmstrips. She appeared in the Broadway show, "Teahouse Of The August Moon", married the Stage Manager and had two daughters. She has lived most of her life in New York with many travels to Japan to study and research her roots. She now continues her writing in North Carolina. Greg Robinson, author of "By Order Of The President" has said of "The Secret Of The Zen Garden", "...Sanae Kawaguchi takes us into a secret garden with her sensual novel of a woman's awakening through an unexpected, forbidden love."