a young woman's plunge from her pleasant narrow life into a rich foreign continent brimming with Panpipe-playing Zen masters, nighttime motorboat rides redlining through the jungle, hikes to Inca ruins and Patagonian glaciers, witches, mummies, goddesses, Brazilian bikinis, and a snow-covered volcano to climb -- accidentally. At the center of it all stands a quirky slightly-unstable surf guru who bends her mind with insightful wacky tidbits of wisdom and ultimately prompts the question: Can you ever go home again?

Winner of three Solas Literary Awards for Travel Writing, SOLA is pure heart. Venturing out for the first time, learning to be alone, befriending local women, and experimenting with love, the author weaves tales of the quirky, the insane and the absurd during her 2 1/2 year journey through South America. From Costa Rica to Argentina, Amazon to Andes, moon deities to miners, surfing to solitude, her wanderings catapult her into a world forged of unexpected adventures, unforeseeable triumphs and beauty in the kindness of strangers.