In Search of a Course

In Search of a Course recounts the events of a fateful road-trip through the American Southwest

When Mark Cladis embarks, he is spiritually lost, shaken by a failed marriage, and disillusioned by the academic life he has chosen. This is how Paul Kane and Mark Cladis, two Vassar professors, find themselves on a road trip through the Southwest desert. During the trip, Cladis encounters several teachers - Native American educators, local artists, Paul, and the desert itself - who inspire revelations about the land, education, friendship, and the ways of love. Cladis returns considerably healed, spiritually revived, and possessed of a new hope for his life and vocation. On this journey, equally thrilling and healing, he encounters dangers and seeming miracles. From these experiences he receives a distinct feeling of belonging - to the earth, to a spiritual and intellectual ancestry, to a friendship. In Search of a Course is a memoir about those days in the desert that saved his life. It discusses the emotional and embodied strategies he learned in the desert to mitigate suffering, find peace, and repair his life.

‘Cladis has written an honest and beautiful book about finding a course after losing one’s way. 'There are seasons of change that we must accept, even embrace,’ he writes. Yes-the challenge is doing so in horrible weather. Through fractured love, through divorce, through religious crisis, through professional and academic upheaval, through deep seated anxiety-Cladis charts his course so that we might weather life’s seasons more gracefully.‘ - John Kaag, author of New York Times bestsellers American Philosophy: A Love Story