"Hard Travel to Sacred Places " is the record of a personal odyssey through Sout
heast Asia, an external and internal journey through grief and the painful reali
ties of a decadent age. Wurlitzer--novelist, screenwriter, and Buddhist practiti
oner--travels with his wife, photographer Lynn Davis, on a photo assignment to t
he sacred sites of Thailand, Burma, and Cambodia. Heavy Westernization, sex club
s, aging hippies and expatriates, and political dissidents provide a vivid contr
ast to the peace that Wurlitzer and Davis seek, still reeling from the death of
their son in a car accident. As Davis with her camera searches for a thread of m
eaning among the artifacts and relics of a more enlightened age, Wurlitzer grasp
s at the wisdom of the Buddhist teachings in an effort to assuage his grief. His
journal chronicles the survival of age-old truths in a world gone mad.
