THE SEEKER ACADEMY

A suburban mother seeks solace at a holistic retreat.

When Grace Hudson’s niece is stricken with leukemia, the devoted aunt spends many hours at her bedside. She also encounters other suffering children during her time in the hospital, and, in the face of their pain and the seeming pointlessness of their suffering, Grace’s distress intensifies. Eventually, it becomes clear that her grief at these children’s plights is a manifestation of a deeper, existential suffering. At the suggestion of friends, she parts from her husband and son for a several-week stay at the Seeker Academy, a holistic retreat for seekers of inner peace and community. The bulk of the story traces Grace’s own spiritual journey at the Academy, as she attends yoga classes and workshops, performs daily chores and, most often, engages in lengthy dialogues with other students and faculty of the Academy, each of whom is distinguishable mainly by his or her particular worldview. Though the peripheral characters rarely rise above the level of symbolic stand-in, their differing viewpoints imbue the narrative with a satisfying richness, and the author mercifully avoids proselytizing. However, while thoughtfully composed and written in a meditative, occasionally hypnotizing prose that mirrors the placidity of the Academy itself, the protracted contemplations on the nature of faith, awareness and other esoteric concerns are far too ruminative to be engaging on a page-to-page level. One of the central tenets of the New Age movement–the universe in small things–is reflected in the quotidian subjects explored extensively by the author, but it remains questionable whether several hundred pages of such a strategy is effective, or even necessary.

Too esoteric for the general reader, but will find an audience among New Age devotees.