The book is full of stories about her place in her traditional family, where her father was the intellectual, her mother the traditional housewife and her sister the older sister who never got the nurturing she needed. As the favored child with a wobbly sense of her own power, DeLuca chronicles her development as a writer and painter, her teaching life, her marital struggles, and her yearning for a spiritual life that centered itself in this world. The book moves in and out of narrative, framing stories in theoretical contexts, calling upon her understanding of Buddhism—which is avowedly a study in progress—to give context and meaning to her experience.
Her colleague and award-winning scholar Peter Taubman writes: "I can't think of anything I've read that does such a beautiful job of presenting Buddhist practice and revealing how it works in the raw, everyday reality of our lives. Each chapter is a gem. I was provoked, moved, inspired, and tickled by so many of the stories recounted in the book, the way they were framed in terms of the author's own practice. And the prose is beautiful. The word 'pellucid' kept coming to mind. . . . The writing in this brilliant work is like a totally clear glass, and the light shines through, illuminating paths through these dark days."