Elizabeth Gilbert

The author of this memoir of travels to Italy, India, and Indonesia, Liz is a New York writer struggling to recover from a contentious divorce, a failed love affair, and a bout of severe, near-suicidal depression. Liz and her sister Catherine grow up on a Christmas tree farm in Connecticut in a largely non-practicing Protestant family. Having agreed with her never-named husband, whom she marries too young and uncritically, that once she turns 30 she will get pregnant and live like everyone else, Liz discovers, at 31, that she is ambivalent about motherhood and needs out of the marriage of convenience. Sobbing in her bathroom for the 47th consecutive night, Liz prays to God for the first time in her life. While her husband is refusing to settle, Liz gets a magazine assignment to visit Bali and write about Yoga vacations. There she meets a healer, Ketut Liyer,who...