I thought I would enjoy this book far more than I did. Not that it wasn't interesting, but the topic is so fascinating and so little is known that I had hoped it would be a page-turner. It wasn't but that doesn't mean I didn't learn some interesting facts about northern exploration during this great age of exploration. For example, she relates the story of Deborah Sabo, "an archaeologist excavating Thule Inuit ruins on Baffin Island" [who] dug up a haunting little ivory figure depicting a Norseman wearing a long tunic and a cross on his chest. It was carbon-dated to the thirteenth or fourteenth century" (p. 125)--an interesting factoid for those of us who collect stories of early Norse travels to the New World. He also alerted me to a book I had never heard of which is definitely on my "to read" list--Jane Smiley's novel, The Greenlanders, which describes "the decline of one family in the vanishing Norse colony. The story begins in the second half of the fourteenth century" (p. 138). But most astonishingly, I learned that John Cabot, explorer of Newfoundland, was a Venetian (born Giovanni Caboto in Genoa)! who anglicized his name when he moved to London around 1484 (p. 132). But I wish the actual story of the Zen Brothers had had more depth to it, but then the resources are slight, which only left me longing for more. ( )