Set against the backdrop of vibrant 1980s LA, this wild and intimate debut memoir follows a young woman’s quest for marriage, meaning, and lasting happiness.

At thirty-two, Laurie outgrows her sleepy beach town and moves to the epicenter of the anything-goes eighties: Los Angeles. There, she befriends a teenage wizard and a Russian defector. She enrolls in a Hogwarts-style psychic college. She gets a job at a hilltop Hindu convent, where she considers taking her monastic vows. She dates an Indian guru and shares heart-to-heart conversations with a Catholic priest.

But it is only when her home nearly burns to the ground that Laurie finds what she is looking for: her true calling. Reading passages from a cache of 300 old diaries that were spared by the flames, Laurie locates clues planted in her past and gradually comes to a realization: She must let go of the conventional, “white-picket fence” marital vow she has sought for decades, and instead must fashion an entirely different kind of vow for herself.

With this knowledge in hand, Laurie sets about fulfilling her sacred contract. In turn, she experiences for the first time an intense rightness—a sense that this is how her life is meant to be.