A young secular writer`s journey along ancient religious pilgrimage routes in Spain, Japan & Ukraine leads to a surprise family reconciliation in this literary memoir Gideon Lewis-Kraus arrived in free-spirited Berlin from San Francisco as a young writer in search of a place to enjoy life to the fullest, & to forget the pain his father, a gay rabbi, had caused his family when he came out in middle age & emotionally abandoned his sons. But Berlin offers only unfocused dissipation, frustration & anxiety; to find what he is looking for (though he`s not quite sure what it is), Gideon undertakes three separate ancient pilgrimages, travelling hundreds of miles: the thous&-year old Camino de Santiago in Spain with a friend, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, & finally, with his father & brother, a migration to the tomb of a famous Hassidic mystic in the Ukraine. It is on this last pilgrimage that Gideon reconnects with his father, & discovers that the most difficult & meaningful quest of all was the journey of his heart.A beautifully written, throught-provoking, & very moving meditation on what gives our lives a sense of purpose, & how we travel between past & present in search of hope for our future. ” Beautiful, often very funny...a story that is both searching & purposeful, one that forces the reader, like the pilgrim, to value the journey as much as the destination.” New Yorker ” If David Foster Wallace had written Eat, Pray, Love it might have come close to approximating the adventures of Gideon Lewis-Kraus” Gary Shteyngart ” Gideon Lewis-Kraus has written a very honest, very smart, very moving book about being young & rootless & even wayward. With great compassion & zeal he gets at the question: why search the world to solve the riddle of your own heart?” Dave Eggers Gideon Lewis-Kraus has written for numerous US publications, including Harper`s, The Believer, The New York Times Book Review, Los Angeles Times Book Review, Slate & others. A 2007-08 Fulbright scholarship brought him to Berlin, a hotbed of contemporary restlessness where he conceived this book. He now lives in New York, but continues to find himself frequently on the road to other places.