Holy Rover

Starred review from July 10, 2017
In this vivacious memoir, travel writer Erickson (Iowa: Off the Beaten Path) charts her meandering spiritual journey via a dozen pilgrimages she’s taken, including to locations such as Hildegard of Bingen’s Eibingen Abbey in Germany and a Tibetan Buddhist temple in Indiana. An Iowa farmer’s daughter, Erickson grew up Lutheran and flirted with Buddhism and Unitarianism before becoming an ordained deacon in a local Episcopal community. Now she jokes that she’s “in an open marriage with Jesus” that allows her to benefit from the wisdom of many different faiths. Each chapter stylishly blends memoir with travelogue; sections from the author’s chronological spiritual biography are interspersed with accounts of relevant trips she’s made. For instance, her time as a Wiccan persuaded her of the spiritual power of the natural world, reinforced by her visit to Iceland with its Norse gods and belief in elves. Meanwhile, her son’s meningitis scare convinced her of the miracle of healing—faith in which struck her as a common trait in the hordes of Lourdes pilgrims. A trip to Thomas Merton’s Abbey of Gethsemani in Kentucky is a highlight. Whether describing mystical visions or the rhythms of everyday life, Erickson turns the spiritual journey into a series of exciting transformations.

August 1, 2017
Globe-trotting travel writer Erickson isn't interested in recommending the best hotels, restaurants, resorts, and the like. No, her goal is God as she searches out a host of places sacred to the world's religions, traditional and, well, nontraditional (looking for elves in Iceland, anyone?). Thus, her peripatetic journeys are not pleasant vacations but pilgrimages, instead, and they are twofold: the exterior experiences she shares and the interior ones that chart her spiritual evolution from Lutheran to Wiccan, from Unitarian Universalist to Native American spirit animal, and from Buddhist to Episcopalian, the last of which proves to be her ultimate spiritual destination as she becomes a deacon. Along the way, she shares the pilgrimages that take her to such disparate places as Ephesus and Iona, Machu Picchu and South Dakota's Bear Butte, Lourdes and Bloomington, Indiana. She offers the history and background of each place she visits as well as what revelations she has experienced there. As a seeker, she shares what she has sought, and one senses her journeys have only begun. One wishes her Godspeed.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2017, American Library Association.)