The words I want to do better came to Dani Shapiro unbidden. She says: “I wanted to be a better mother, wife, writer, teacher, person, member of society… I wanted to practice yoga more days of the week. I wanted to understand the difference between the Sunnis and the Shiites. I wanted to be someone who not only bought flaxseed oil at the health food store, but actually ingested it.”
This endless list of self-improvements, however, wasn’t what Shapiro really meant by do better, and Devotion is the story of her seeking to get to the root of what she did really mean—to connect to something bigger. This memoir takes us on a journey from Orthodox Jewish rituals to meditation retreats and, finally, it takes us home.
Dani Shapiro is the author of the best-selling memoir Slow Motion. Her essays and short stories have appeared in The New Yorker, Elle, and O: The Oprah Magazine.
