Product Details:

“It doesn’t matter what the goal of a pilgrimage is--the waters of the Ganges or the black stone of Mecca, the Church of the Holy Sepulcher or the Wailing Wall,” writes Joan Weimer in Awestruck: A Skeptic’s Pilgrimage. “It doesn’t matter if you set out because you have faith or because you don’t. You set out on a quest and amazing things happen.”

This “haunted, hauntingly beautiful”* memoir is a “dazzing exploration of love between generations and between partners.”** When the Black Madonna erupts like a volcano in the life of Joan Weimer, an agnostic Jew, this black-faced image of the Virgin Mary triggers painful memories of Joan’s dead mother and threatens to estrange Joan from her husband, a committed atheist.

As she tracks down the Black Madonna at her shrines in Switzerland, Italy, England, France and Spain; as she walks ancient labyrinths in churches and commons, Joan’s outer journey makes possible a profound inner journey. Exploring the tangled roots of pagan, Christian and Jewish spirituality with a scholar’s passion for truth, Joan finds herself a magnet for signs and wonders that shock her body and pierce her consciousness with moments of pain and insight and ecstasy.

*James Hollis, author of Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
**Mary Felstiner, author of Out of Joint: A Private & Public History of Arthritis

About The Author:

Joan Weimer was an overscheduled college teacher, a human rights activist and mother, and a religious dropout happily married to a devout atheist, when a spine injury did her the favor of taking her out of life for a year without killing her. The result was a crack in the wall of her skepticism and the discovery that her life was as fractured as her spine. Healing one meant healing both, and led to her “powerful, inspiring memoir written with humor, insight, and a gripping gift for detail.” (Kirkus, starred review) Published by Random House, Back Talk: Teaching Lost Selves to Speak was also adapted into a play which critics found “fierce and funny,” “superbly and subtly crafted...a richly satisfying intellectual and emotional experience.”

Joan brought her warmth and humor to talks and writing workshops at book stores, conferences, churches, and colleges around the country. Her new book Awestruck: A Skeptic’s Pilgrimage extends her expertise in healing mind, body and spirit to healing relationships--with a parent, a partner, and the religion of one’s childhood.

Joan is the editor of Jewish Renewal in America: 22 Stories of Transformation, Spirit and Community; of the anthology Women Artists, Women Exiles: ‘Miss Grief’ and Other Stories by Constance Fenimore Woolson; and, with David Weimer, of the award-winning anthology Literature of America. She won the McGinness Award for nonfiction and was selected as the Frey Foundation Distinguished Visiting Professor at the University of North Carolina. She earned her doctorate at Rutgers and is a professor emerita at Drew University where she taught American literature, Women’s Studies and nonfiction writing.