My book club and I loved this book, partly because it was a ripping good story and partly because it covered ground that we were all familiar with: San Francisco, San Jose (when there were still fruit orchards on the outskirts of the city) and the hills above Santa Cruz. ( )

This is one of my favorite books! The premise of the book as a factual memoir is completely believable and I had to look many times at the "This is a work of fiction..." citation to be reminded that it was truly a novel and not a memoir. I'm fascinated by the premise that someone can be institutionalized in a psychiatric hospital on the say-so of a more powerful person. Mei makes the best of every situation she is in, and the twists and turns of her life are well laid out in this memoir! ( )

Award-winning novel is a magical fusion of spirituality and historyThis 1987 American Book Award Winner by Dorothy A. Bryant masterfully blends the narrator's spiritual journey through the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, WWI in Europe, the Great Depression as a laborer and union organizer in California, and WWII from a pacifist's perspective, until she finally discovers spiritual peace in a psychiatric hospital.Spiritual/metaphysical content: High. About ten pages into the 1919 - 1926 section, Bryant describes a spiritual experience, probably her own, in achingly vivid prose. She ends by stating that "I never saw it as a temporary flight from reality. It was the opposite, an experience of hidden reality which I have never doubted." That singular event is the string upon which the remainder of the narrator's life experiences are threaded. From founding a commune in the redwoods to choosing to live at an asylum, every action she takes is aimed at coming to terms with that event. Although her metaphysical encounter differed vastly from my own, her half-page description of that singular event rang true for me; she was writing from her soul.My take: Dorothy Bryant's remarkable research into the history of spiritualism and psychology in the first half of the twentieth century, blended with her extraordinary metaphysical insight, made this book an instant classic for me. At once both epic and intensely personal, the story illustrates how difficult it is to realizes one's full spiritual potential, even if we are lucky enough to realize what that potential is and have the resources and the discipline to reach for it.For more reviews of new age novels, see Fiction For A New Age. ( )