Echo Under Story unfolds within a pristine land- and seascape of Northern California, where a woman struggles to restore her family home. The story weaves together three strands: her mother's recently discovered journals, the daughter's re-encounter with the village and the landscape of her childhood, and Proust's In Search of Lost Time.

There are echoes of another three-stranded braid: writing, reading, and finally, translation--of Proust, of memory, of the world that demands observation. The three activities become virtually indistinguishable in the sparse, often lyrical, prose: writing calls for reading, which in turn calls for more writing. And along this circular route are innumerable bifurcating paths that deviate, only to rejoin the main circle further along: rereading, quotation, translation.