In a few brief glimpses of his spiritual journey, novelist, biographer, and self-help writer Brad Gooch reveals his suburban upbringing, the experience of a personal awakening in high school after viewing the Billy Graham production The Cross and the Switchblade, baptism in a Presbyterian church, a fascination with medieval Christianity, and some time spent in an experimental semi-monastic community of men and women. The author of City Poet: The Life and Times of Frank O'Hara and Finding the Boyfriend Within is intrigued by the variety of religious experience in America.

Godtalk: Travels in Spiritual America is an engrossing spiritual walkabout executed with panache and intelligence. It also can be seen as Gooch's imaginative recreation of a Chautauqua experience as he gains intellectual and spiritual renewal by listening to the wisdom of a variety of religious teachers. He takes it on the road as he visits workshops, ashrams, retreat centers, worship services, and study circles.

The author, Professor of English at William Paterson University in New Jersey, begins this spiritual journey with a look at the New Age Urantia Book; already more than 500,000 copies have been printed since its first publication a half century ago. Devotees insist that this religious work was written by a committee of extraterrestrial beings. They find in it a message of love bolstered by scientific and philosophical insights into the meaning of life.

From this homegrown cult, Gooch moves on to the pop Hinduism of Deepak Chopra and Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, who have built up large constituencies. Chopra's bestselling books and Gurumayi's revered status as a Siddha Yoga guru are examples of the marketplace created by spiritual seekers.

During his visits to Gethsemani, the Trappist monastery where Thomas Merton lived and wrote, Gooch experiences the oddness of the present monastic scene: the number of monks is declining while the number of retreatants wanting to visit these oases of silence is increasing. In Dallas, the author worships with members of the gay congregation of the Cathedral of Hope. But the real spiritual intensity of Gooch's quest surfaces in the last chapter of the book where he opens his heart and mind to Sufi groups in Manhattan.

As Diana Eck has pointed out in her bestselling work, the religious landscape of America has drastically changed over the past 30 years. Gooch discovers that spirituality in this country has become "more sophisticated, more global, more interested in tradition and less in simple-minded expropriation."