TRESNA, Gate of Love chronicles the real-life story of Frances Tse Ardika, the first foreigner to become a Balinese Temple Priestess.


Long before her incarnation, Frances was a Canadian Internet start-up founder fighting burnout in both her love life and career.


Escaping for a week to Bali on her way to attend her umpteenth wedding as a "single," she was looking forward to a vacation not a vocation. But then she meets Adi, an unassuming young Balinese man who shows her a side of Bali most tourists never get to experience.


Here begins her life-changing journey of transformation, rebirth - and love - that would one day bring her through the temple gates.


TRESNA, Gate of Love is the first memoir in her series, Chronicles of a Balinese Priestess. Full of hope, courage - and even a touch of black magic - Frances's memoir is a vivid, inside account of the unexplored beauty, culture, and food of the "real" Bali in the early 2000s, before the age of digital nomads and Instagram influencers. But more than anything, it is a love story. Written with heart-wrenching honesty and good-spirited humour, her journey leads us through dense jungles of emotion to dreams we didn't know could become reality.