Eight American writers from different points of the religious compass discuss how their work is nourished by spiritual concerns and how they try to use those lessons and intuitions in their literature and poetry. The contributors are David Bradley, Frederick Buechner, Allen Ginsberg, Mary Gordon, Hillel Levine, Hugh Nissenson, Jaroslav Pelikan, and Patricia Harnpl. Together, as William Zinsser notes in his introduction, these writers are on "a pilgrimage to find the source of their faith as individuals and their strength as artists".