Spanning the emotional and physical globe and cutting a wide swathe of sensibilities, these stories conduce and cajole readers to hit the road, to discover what's out there in the world beyond them, and to ultimately discover themselves. The writers — including Frances Mayes, Anne Lamott, Pam Houston, Jo Ann Beard, Candace Dempsey, and Ann Jones — travel with such evocative attentiveness that the reader is brought along every vivid step of the way — to a peaceful Spanish church, a Laotian boat, a Tunisian desert, and to "a field of wildflowers . . . like colored marbles" in Umbria.