In her early thirties, El.izabeth Gitbert had everything a modern American woman was supposed to want--husband, country home, successful.career--but instead of feel.ing happy and futfilled, she fel.t consumed by panic and confusion. This wise and rapturous book is the story of how she l.eft behind all these outward marks of success, and of what she found in their ptace. Fottowing a divorce and a crushing depression,Gilbert set out to examine three different aspects of her nature, set against the backdrop of three different cuttures: pteasure in ItaLy, devotion in India, and on the Indonesian isl.and of Bal.i, a batance between worl.dty enjoyment and divine transcendence.

Gilbert, author of The Last American Man (2002) and a well-traveled I'll-try-anything-once journalist, chronicles her intrepid quest for spiritual healing. Driven to despair by a punishing divorce and an anguished love affair, Gilbert flees New York for sojourns in the three Is. She goes to Italy to learn the language and revel in the cuisine, India to meditate in an ashram, and Indonesia to reconnect with a healer in Bali. This itinerary may sound self-indulgent or fey, but there is never a whiny or pious or dull moment because Gilbert is irreverent, hilarious, zestful, courageous, intelligent, and in masterful command of her sparkling prose. A captivating storyteller with a gift for enlivening metaphors, Gilbert is Anne Lamott's hip, yoga-practicing, footloose younger sister, and readers will laugh and cry as she recounts her nervy and outlandish experiences and profiles the extraordinary people she meets. As Gilbert switches from gelato to kundalini Shakti to herbal cures Balinese-style, she ponders the many paths to divinity, the true nature of happiness, and the boon of good-hearted, sexy love. Gilbert's sensuous and audacious spiritual odyssey is as deeply pleasurable as it is enlightening.