Home After Exile

What does home mean to you?

The spiritual autobiography "Home After Exile" begins in an orphanage. The author's adopted father dies when she's six. Her adopted mother says she's a worthless piece of garbage. Her stepfather haunts her bedroom at night. Through all that darkness, a mysterious 'something more' invites Ayres to a journey of spiritual growth. As a child, she builds altars in the woods to commune with a numinous Presence that is both More and All. As an adult, she sets out to find more prosaic cures for the loneliness that dogs her every step. Marriage. A convent. A search for her birthmother. Still it lures her on, that tantalizing glimpse of wholeness and belonging she had savored as a child. Finally and miraculously given, in the most unlikely place of all.

Annie Dillard, author of "An American Childhood," says, "Sumptuous, lyrical prose. The earth-centered spirituality of this inspiring life story is an archetype of redemption, changing the way we relate to ourselves, each other and the planet."

The Franciscan theologian Ilia Delio, OSF, author of "The Unbearable Wholeness of Being," says, "In her uplifting memoir, Elizabeth Ayres opens her soul to the world, revealing an insuperable human spirit that remains - despite years of abuse and abandonment - infinitely free and deeply in love with the God of life. Ayres is an artist of the human spirit, whose spiritual journey through death into life bears witness to the power of that divine Love which carries us on eagles' wings."