Evelyn in Transit - Hardcover

by David Guterson (Author)

Radically open-minded, formidably strong, and unusually clear-eyed about herself and others, Evelyn Bednarz has always been a misfit. She's easily bored, unsuited to life at school, asks odd questions about faith and time, and sees through conventions others take for granted. Seeking to be true to herself, she hitchhikes across the American West taking odd jobs.

In distant Tibet, another life unfolds as remote from Evelyn's as can be: the life of a boy named Tsering, raised as a Buddhist monk in the mountains of Tibet, who eventually becomes a high lama.

And yet, their lives are strangely linked--as Evelyn discovers when a trio of Buddhist lamas show up at her door to announce that her five-year-old son Cliff is the seventh reincarnation of the illustrious Norbu Rinpoche, recently deceased. The lamas' visit sets off a family crisis and a media firestorm over Cliff's future.

Written in a spare, precise style of extraordinary beauty, full of surprising humor and luminosity, Evelyn in Transit delivers much-needed insight and compassion about humanity's strivings for transcendence, and what it might mean to "live the right way."

Back Jacket

Praise for the work of David Guterson

"Here's the admirable thing. His books keep getting better."
-- Bruce Barcott, New York Times Book Review

"With empathy as deep as Puget Sound and his usual graceful prose, Guterson does a masterful job."
-- Timothy Egan, author of National Book Award winner The Worst Hard Time

"Guterson's particular gift is for description. . . . [He] has fashioned something haunting and true."
-- Pico Iyer, Time

"Guterson is the kind of writer about whom people used to say, when there were such things, 'I'd read him, even if he wrote the phone book.' Every sentence has a graceful weight and meter and is illumined by a subtle intelligence that makes his descriptions arresting but never showy."
-- Scott Turow, New York Times Book Review