Tyson Motsenbocker is an author and musician who, in addition to having the best last name to say out loud, wrote a captivating memoir about his 40-day pilgrimage up the coast of California. In Where The Waves Turn Back, Tyson tells how, in the wake of the death of his luminous and beloved mom, he walked out his front door and across the state. Motsenbocker crossed hundreds of miles as he started to process his grief and his disappointment with a God who felt suddenly unsafe. Maybe you can identify with a world that looks abruptly and irrevocably different. What on earth is a person to do? I think you’ll enjoy hearing Tyson’s stories of how we walk these roads, what we learn, and how, when we return home, we bring some of the road with us.

After years on the road, Tyson Motsenbocker returned home to the impending death of his 57-year-old hero and mother. He begged God to heal her, but she died anyway. With the death of his mother followed the death of the childhood version of his faith.

Shortly before her death, however, Tyson became intrigued by the complicated legacy of Father Junipero Serra, the 18th -century Franciscan monk and canonized saint. He also discovered Serra's "El Camino Real," a 600-mile pilgrimage route between Tijuana and San Francisco that had been largely forgotten for more than 200 years.

Tyson's journey takes him down smog-choked highways, across fog-laden beaches, past multi-million-dollar coastal estates, and through towering redwood forests. And as he walks, Tyson also wrestles with his faith, questioning the pat answers and easy prayers he once readily accepted, trying to understand how hope and tragedy can all be wrapped up in the same God. The people he meets along the way challenge his understanding of the meaning of security, of what it means to live a meaningful life, and of the legacies we all leave behind.

Where the Waves Turn Back is both part journal and part spiritual memoir and, ultimately, a thrilling and deeply satisfying read that asks questions that will resonate with readers seeking meaning in an utterly disorienting age.

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