Elizabeth Gilbert is, in her own words, "the kind of person who, when a ninth-generation Indonesian medicine man tells you that you're destined to move to Bali and live with him for four months, thinks you should make every effort to do that." She is also exactly the kind of person a ninth-generation Indonesian medicine man would say that to: charming, blond, gregarious, spiritually curious and highly mobile.
At 34, Gilbert was going through a painful, sobbing-on-the-bathroom-floor divorce. So she pulled an Under the Tuscan Sun and embarked on a year of travel, divided neatly into thirds like a tub of Neapolitan...