"The Good Shufu" is the true story of a "left-leaning, 36-year-old confirmed Bostonian" who falls in love with her Japanese MBA student, Toru, after a three-week courtship in Kobe. With self-deprecating humor and a sharp recognition of the prejudices and stereotypes operating at both ends of the globe, author Tracy Slater quietly breaks down assumptions with a keen sense of humor. She transmutes the mundane into subtle life lessons whether negotiating with her disapproving new husband if she should get a housekeeper (he eventually buys a vacuum cleaner instead) or bonding with her father-in-law over cooking chicken parmigiana without an oven ("I ... sliced up the chicken and cooked it in pieces on the fish grill, smashing down the cheese topping so it would fit, splattering tomato sauce everywhere.").