Critical Praise

"I was immensely moved by this elegant book, which reminded me all over again that all of us-at some point or another-must buck up our courage and face down the big spiritual questions of life, death, love, loss and surrender. Dani Shapiro probes all those questions gracefully and honestly, avoiding overly simple conclusions, while steadfastly exploring her own complicated relationship to faith and doubt."

—Elizabeth Gilbert, Eat, Pray, Love

"Brave, compelling, unexpectedly witty. . . . Stunningly intimate journey. . . . Thanks to Shapiro’s excruciatingly honest self-examination and crystal clear, lyrical writing, the journey --- as secular swami Steve Jobs once famously said --- is indeed the reward."

—People (4 out of 4 stars)

"In Devotion... Shapiro movingly unravels her personal history . . . and her subsequent quest to resolve a spiritual unease and to satisfy her son’s questions about God. . . . Shapiro’s spiritual inquiry digs at doubts many of us face about our place in the universe, and her struggles with the God question serve as a hopeful reminder that a belief system can begin with an individual manifesto: less a set of rules than a matrix of bits and pieces that form the ‘patchwork of our lives.’"

—Kari Wethington, Elle

"At a certain age (heading-into-middle) and level of income (upper middle), Americans are prone to ask themselves, in the tradition of Peggy Lee, “Is That All There Is?” This tendency has spawned a subgenre of Seeker books-like Kathleen Norris’s Cloister Walk. Anne Lamott’s Traveling Mercies and, of course, Elizabeth Gilbert’s Eat, Pray, Love. With Devotion, Shapiro joins their ranks…In short, lyrical bursts of prose, Shapiro explores various flavors of belief….Shapiro is a gifted chronicler of frayed nerves."

—Judith Newman, New York Times Book Review