This young-adult journey of physical, emotional, and spiritual discovery is based on real people and events that the author became familiar with while living in the interesting little city of Olympia, Washington during the 1970s and 1980s. All the names and identifying details have been changed, of course. "Ariel" and her friends followed a religious path that is today very rare. This gives the reader the possibility of feeling discomfort, perhaps even hatred. It is also an opportunity for the reader to see past the details and glimpse the essential goodness and beauty in any person's spiritual experience. "Ariel" only got lost on one dead-end path during her youth. The author wishes his own youth had been so uneventful, and that he had had friends like she had.