Evelyn in Transit

Evelyn Bednarz has never fit neatly anywhere. She is sharp, restless, deeply observant, and uninterested in easy answers. School does not suit her. Convention does not call to her. She drifts through the American West, taking odd jobs, asking hard questions about time, faith, and how to live a life that feels chosen rather than prescribed.

Far away, in the mountains of Tibet, another life unfolds. A boy named Tsering is raised in a Buddhist monastery and grows into a revered spiritual leader. The connection between these two lives seems impossible until it suddenly is not. When Buddhist lamas arrive at Evelyn’s door believing her young son is the reincarnation of a deceased lama, her carefully self-directed life is upended.

What follows is not spectacle but reckoning: a mother thinking deeply about belief, freedom, responsibility, and what it means to choose for yourself and for your child. Written with restraint and quiet beauty, this is a novel less interested in answers than in the courage to sit with the questions. Thoughtful, humane, and gently luminous. A book for readers drawn to spiritual inquiry, interior lives, and stories that trust you to think and feel alongside them.

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