Where the Waves Turn Back

"After years on the road performing at sold-out venues alongside platinum-selling and Grammy-winning Christian artists, Tyson Motsenbocker returned home to the impending death of his 57-year-old hero and mother. He begged God to heal her, but she died anyway. When they buried her body, Tyson also buried the childhood version of his faith. Weeks before her death, however, Motsenbocker discovered the story of 18th-century Spanish monk St. Junipero Serra who dedicated his life to the idea that tragedy and suffering are portals to renewal. He discovered Serra's "El Camino Real," a 600-mile pilgrimage route down the California coast that had been largely forgotten for more than 200 years. In desperation, Motsenbocker sets out to retrace the Saint's steps along the freeways and underpasses, littered beaches and multi-million-dollar coastal estates. During the next 40 days, Motsenbocker sinks below the comfortable surface of society he has always known, enduring excruciating pain, dodging addicts and roaring traffic, stepping over rats, and befriending retired veterans. His pilgrimage up the Western shore of America connects him to a lost mystic who often seems to hover just above as he grieves the loss of his mother and the insolubility of the kind of God he once comfortably trusted. Where the Waves Turn Back is a literary journey for the wanderer, doubter, adventurer, skeptic, mystic and seeker in all of us. Worn-out and weary travelers of all ages will be invited, along with Motsenbocker, to renegotiate their place in a world that's irrevocably changed. Readers will be captivated by the depth of Motsenbocker's honesty and vulnerability, enchanted by his lyrical prose, and inspired by his hard-fought healing. But more than this, they will discover portals to their own spiritual wonderings-the kinds that require leaving behind the worlds we once loved and loving the worlds in which we live"--