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Traveling with Spirits
Traveling With Spirits is a exciting, nuanced novel about an unpredictable journey across continents, cultures and values. This is a story of deep, abiding friendship, surprising romance, political conspiracy, physical challenge and emotional courage. Monica Murphy quits her Minneapolis medical practice to work at Catholic medical mission in a decaying Indian hill station in Uttar Pradesh. She confronts challenges to her faith, her intentions and about the nature of her contributions.
Monica struggles with the loss of those dearest to her and winds up finding love in completely unexpected places. Daily, she is delighted and confounded by the unpredictability of life in India.
As we follow Monica from her cutting-edge clinic in Minnesota to the rudimentary hospital in Moorty, we meet her devoted friend Beata, her troubled sister Jeanne, her prima donna colleague Dr. Jill, the deceptively cranky professor Ashok, the authoritarian colleague Kevin, the challenging teacher Sudha and a range of other complex, vivid characters who shape her journey and her life.
Monica struggles with the loss of those dearest to her and winds up finding love in completely unexpected places. Daily, she is delighted and confounded by the unpredictability of life in India.
As we follow Monica from her cutting-edge clinic in Minnesota to the rudimentary hospital in Moorty, we meet her devoted friend Beata, her troubled sister Jeanne, her prima donna colleague Dr. Jill, the deceptively cranky professor Ashok, the authoritarian colleague Kevin, the challenging teacher Sudha and a range of other complex, vivid characters who shape her journey and her life.
304 pages, Paperback
First published September 17, 2013
1 person is currently reading
273 people want to read
About the author
Valerie Miner
28 books36 followers Valerie Miner is the award-winning author of fifteen books. Her new story collection, Bread and Salt, will be published in September, 2020. Her latest novel, Traveling with Spirits, will be published in September, 2013. Other novels include After Eden, Range of Light, A Walking Fire, Winter's Edge, Blood Sisters, All Good Women, Movement: A Novel in Stories, and Murder in the English Department. Her short fiction books include Abundant Light, The Night Singers and Trespassing. Her collection of essays is Rumors from the Cauldron: Selected Essays, Reviews and Reportage. In 2002, The Low Road: A Scottish Family Memoir was a Finalist for the PEN USA Creative Non-Fiction Award. Abundant Light was a 2005 Fiction Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards.
Valerie Miner’s work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Triquarterly, Salmagundi, New Letters, Ploughshares, The Village Voice, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review, The T.L.S., The Women’s Review of Books, The Nation and other journals. Her stories and essays are published in more than sixty anthologies. A number of her pieces have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her work has been translated into German, Turkish, Danish, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish and Dutch. In addition to single-authored projects, she has collaborated on books, museum exhibits as well as theatre.
She has won fellowships and awards from The Rockefeller Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The NEA, The Jerome Foundation, The Heinz Foundation, The Australia Council Literary Arts Board and numerous other sources. She has received Fulbright Fellowships to Tunisia, India and Indonesia.
Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award, she has taught for over twenty-five years and is now a professor and artist in residence at Stanford University. She travels internationally giving readings, lectures, and workshops. She and her partner live in San Francisco and Mendocino County, California. Her website is www.valerieminer.com
Valerie Miner’s work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Triquarterly, Salmagundi, New Letters, Ploughshares, The Village Voice, Prairie Schooner, The Gettysburg Review, The T.L.S., The Women’s Review of Books, The Nation and other journals. Her stories and essays are published in more than sixty anthologies. A number of her pieces have been dramatized on BBC Radio 4. Her work has been translated into German, Turkish, Danish, Italian, Spanish, French, Swedish and Dutch. In addition to single-authored projects, she has collaborated on books, museum exhibits as well as theatre.
She has won fellowships and awards from The Rockefeller Foundation, The McKnight Foundation, The NEA, The Jerome Foundation, The Heinz Foundation, The Australia Council Literary Arts Board and numerous other sources. She has received Fulbright Fellowships to Tunisia, India and Indonesia.
Winner of a Distinguished Teaching Award, she has taught for over twenty-five years and is now a professor and artist in residence at Stanford University. She travels internationally giving readings, lectures, and workshops. She and her partner live in San Francisco and Mendocino County, California. Her website is www.valerieminer.com
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
September 8, 2013
Subtle and immensely moving. My review:
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August 8, 2017
I received this book for free from First Reads in exchange for a honest review.
I am really enjoying this story. Monica is an American doctor that has joined a mission group, and is traveling to India for a unknown amount of time to work at a Catholic mission hospital/clinic. During her flight to India, she befriends an Indian professor, and they keep in touch and meet several times over the time that she's in his country. They start reaching out to each other every few days, and since her father abandoned her family when she was younger, she struggles with maintaining long term relationships with men.
The story goes back and forth a few years in time. It starts as she's leaving for India, then flashes back to before India and then back to present time. But she tells you each time, so that you're not left feeling confused.
She's very close with her mom and her younger sister, until her mother's untimely death. Which happened on a rare weekend get away for Monica and her boyfriend Erica. After her mom dies, she pushes everyone away, except her best friend Beata.
I really enjoyed reading this story, I will be recommending this to my friends and will look for other books by this author.
Thank you for giving me the chance to read this, because I might not have found the book if not for the giveaway!
I am really enjoying this story. Monica is an American doctor that has joined a mission group, and is traveling to India for a unknown amount of time to work at a Catholic mission hospital/clinic. During her flight to India, she befriends an Indian professor, and they keep in touch and meet several times over the time that she's in his country. They start reaching out to each other every few days, and since her father abandoned her family when she was younger, she struggles with maintaining long term relationships with men.
The story goes back and forth a few years in time. It starts as she's leaving for India, then flashes back to before India and then back to present time. But she tells you each time, so that you're not left feeling confused.
She's very close with her mom and her younger sister, until her mother's untimely death. Which happened on a rare weekend get away for Monica and her boyfriend Erica. After her mom dies, she pushes everyone away, except her best friend Beata.
I really enjoyed reading this story, I will be recommending this to my friends and will look for other books by this author.
Thank you for giving me the chance to read this, because I might not have found the book if not for the giveaway!
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
January 25, 2014
When I was deciding which "shelves" to put this novel in, I checked "travel books" as well as "women writers." The book is told from the point of view of a woman who has lost many things, but not her independent spirit and innate restlessness. She's in India, soaking up new sights and sounds (How fortunate for us -- Miner is matchless in her descriptions) and measuring herself in the present against what she left behind.
If this is beginning to sound a little like Elizabeth Gilbert -- well, no. There are no dramatics in Miner's novel. Monica's epiphanies are quiet ones -- so quiet that we often don't realize she's had an epiphany until several pages later. And that is wonderful, because epiphanies don't come easy, why should being in India change that fact?
Monica has sturdy values, a staunch refusal to judge, and a willing open-ness. "Exhilaration and uneasiness" are equal in her psyche. So is generosity. She's not looking for self-fulfillment, or even anything as clichéd as happiness. She considers things; she wants to LEARN.
If you give yourself up to the book's quiet rhythms, you'll finish with a sense of deep satisfaction.
If this is beginning to sound a little like Elizabeth Gilbert -- well, no. There are no dramatics in Miner's novel. Monica's epiphanies are quiet ones -- so quiet that we often don't realize she's had an epiphany until several pages later. And that is wonderful, because epiphanies don't come easy, why should being in India change that fact?
Monica has sturdy values, a staunch refusal to judge, and a willing open-ness. "Exhilaration and uneasiness" are equal in her psyche. So is generosity. She's not looking for self-fulfillment, or even anything as clichéd as happiness. She considers things; she wants to LEARN.
If you give yourself up to the book's quiet rhythms, you'll finish with a sense of deep satisfaction.
Want to read
September 13, 2014PERHAPS I would like some of Miner's novels, she is a younger American author who reviews for WRB.
This book is set in an Indian Hill Station.
the memoir on Scottish family might also be of interest, or her short stories??
This book is set in an Indian Hill Station.
the memoir on Scottish family might also be of interest, or her short stories??
January 11, 2015
My favorite genre, historical fiction, I leaned more about India. And it got me thinking about my own spiritual path.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews