Paula D'Arcy gives up the stern, judgmental, remote, and all controlling God of her childhood when she goes to college. Then at 24, she sees the Sun Dance at Wind River Reservation and feels in her soul a yearning for connection with "the Great Spirit." When she is 27, her husband and daughter are killed in an automobile crash, and she is plunged into grief. She raises another daughter on her own, has a career as an inspirational speaker, and then suffers a year-long forced layoff due to mononucleosis. At 41, she feels a divine call to take a three-day solitary retreat and fast — a "vision quest" — in the Texas wilderness.

Gift of the Red Bird is D'Arcy's luminous account of her rendezvous with God, silence, fear, hunger, and a little bearer of grace. Like many others who have gone before her, the author discovers the wilderness inside of herself and the dimension of Spirit that resides in the world of nature. She enacts the spiritual practices of listening, wonder, and being present. She recognizes the presence and love of God all around and even inside herself. Reading this stirring account, we find ourselves rejoicing in the epiphanies D'Arcy shares with us.