Pilgrim: Risking the Life I Have to Find the Faith I Seek

In his mid-50s, journalist and memoirist Kravitz (Unfinished Business) set off on a self-described “spiritual shopping expedition.” Though raised Jewish, Kravitz’s last extended sojourn into spirituality had been in college, and he was now married to an atheist who did not understand his desire for a richer spiritual life. This predictable memoir chronicles Kravitz’s two years of “shopping for God”: attending Quaker meeting with a neighbor; taking a class called “Foundations of Self-Healing and Contemplative Life,” which explored the Four Noble Truths; dipping into devotional chant. Along the way, friends get cancer and his aunt dies, bringing mortality home. This “long and winding road” ultimately leads Kravitz to the Jewish Renewal movement. He lands in a small progressive Jewish community near his apartment on the Upper West Side. His wife does not wholly join in, but does take a challah-making workshop and begins preparing Shabbat dinners. It is okay, he concludes in anodyne fashion, if his kids don’t become religious, as long as they lead “empathic, meaning-filled lives.” Agent: David Black, David Black Agency. (May)