RIDICULOUS PACKAGING: (or, my long, strange journey from atheist to Episcopalian, in two acts)

This memoir tells the story of 30-something Favreau's journey from Catholicism to atheism to Episcopalianism. She grew up in a Catholic home; in high school she got into drinking and eventually fell away from God and the church. She found her way to the University of Massachusetts (Amherst), where she graduated from beer to LSD (she now thinks that her drug use was an "attempt to recreate" church rituals—a sort of illicit holy communion). A few years of being an "unapologetic slacker" followed college, when Favreau drove a van for Kinko's, played a little guitar and decided rather suddenly to go to library school in Greensboro, N.C. There, she got sober—her first step on the road back to faith—dipped her toes into Buddhism, breezed through New Age spirituality and then had a "collision with God" that landed her, finally, at an Episcopal church. Now she finds herself wrestling with theology a tad more liberal than that of her Catholic childhood. Indeed, the last few chapters couch theological humdingers in autobiography: hermeneutics, sin, suffering, prayer, compassion. The book is marred by a few annoying writing tics, such as Favreau's penchant for scattering the phrase "But I digress...." Still, Favreau well represents Gen-X spirituality; she is frank about her doubts, and she is as interested in the journey as the destination. (May 15)