In Search of Grace: A Religious Outsider's Journey Across America's Landscape of Faith

Like so many of us these days, Kristin Hahn was raised without much religion. And like so many of us, she sometimes wondered if the practice of a faith might offer some solace or substance otherwise lacking in her life.

An adventurous spirit, Hahn set out to explore faith in America. Wary of the dogma that too often separates both religions and people, she homed in on the actions that speak most convincingly of one's beliefs. Her journey commenced at a unique point in history, at a time and place marked by a vast array of choices -- ancient and new, sacred and secular -- and the freedom to choose among them.

Crisscrossing the nation, Hahn spent a week cloistered in prayer with convent nuns and a month of Ramadan fasting with Muslims. She went door-to-door with young Mormon missionaries and head-to-head with turbaned Sikh yogis. She sat through marathon meditations with Buddhist masters and spent days in conversation and ceremony with an Ojibwe medicine man. Her explorations exposed her to the rich, ancient culture of the Jews and brought her into the enclaves of Christian Scientists and Amish farmers, as well as the less traditional realms of Scientology, neopagan witchcraft, and the congregations of new-age gurus. And this was only the beginning.

What started out as curiosity soon blossomed into something greater, a powerful appreciation for the ways in which Americans observe their faith and how these rituals infuse lives with dimension and meaning.

This book is Hahn's chronicle of an unaffiliated pilgrim's progress across a uniquely American topography of sacred traditions, practices, and beliefs. Openhearted, insightful, humorous, and always thoughtful, it is a book that will speak to the universal need in all of us to seek a spiritual home.