Sense of direction, A.

Gideon Lewis-Kraus moved to Berlin in search of something he could not really define. It had to do with a lack of focus in his life, and with the pain his father, a rabbi, had caused his family when he came out in middle age and emotionally abandoned his sons. Burt Berlin offered only dissipation.

To continue his inner journey, Gideon undertakes three pilgrimages along ancient routes, travelling hundreds of miles, mostly on foot: the thousand-year old Camino de Santiago in Spain with a friend, a solo circuit of eighty-eight Buddhist temples on the Japanese island of Shikoku, and finally, a visit to the tomb of a famous Hassidic mystic in Ukraine. On this last pilgrimage, Gideon reconnects with his father, and discovers that the most meaningful quest of all was the journey of his heart.

A sense of direction is a travel memoir with the emotional power of a novel. A stunningly written, thought-provoking, and very funny meditation on what gives our lives a sense of purpose, and how we travel between past and present in search of hope for our future.