Jessie has always been a pilgrim. It's just that directions have not always been so clear. At first she thought the destination lay in society's council. Her dresses must be ever clean, her manners strictly controlled. But even with the best of intentions, a road that narrow cannot contain the romanticism of youth, the pain of a mother's love, the restlessness of a creative mind and the ultimate longing for something a bit deeper.

Meet a woman striving for spirituality in a world of laundry and bills, where grief and heartache drop in unannounced and society's myth of perfection shatters under the stress of common circumstance. The demons she battles are as familiar as a meddling mother-in-law or dominating husband, as exotic as vague prophecy or ancient curse, and as immobilizing as national terror. Fortunately, hers is also a world of unlikely angels, where a tea-sipping Navy wife, a piano teacher in a rocking chair or even an ex-Nazi official might help light the way.

This woman's story makes it clear that the spiritual path does not have to lead through a chapel or temple, or up to the Himalayas. For today's seeker, it's time to improvise. Jessie is a female Siddhartha of a modern world, where enlightenment is as unpredictable as love and life in a fast-changing world of travel and technology.