Like most of us, Lauren Winner wants something to believe in. The child of a reform Jewish father and a lapsed Southern Baptist mother, she chose to become an Orthodox Jew. But as she faithfully observes the Sabbath rituals and studies Jewish laws, she finds herself increasingly drawn to Christianity. Taking a courageous step, she leaves behind what she loves and converts. Now the even harder part: How does one reinvent a religious self? How does one embrace the new without abandoning the old? How does a convert become spiritually whole. In GIRL MEETS GOD, this appealingly honest young woman takes us through a year in her search for a religious identity. Despite her conversion, she finds that her world is still shaped by her Jewish experiences. Even as she rejoices in the holy days of the Christian calendar, she mourns the Jewish rituals she still holds dear. Attempting to reconcile the two sides of her religious self, Winner applies the lessons of Judaism to the teachings of the New Testament, hosts a Christian seder, and struggles to fit her Orthodox friends into her new religious life. Ultimately she learns that faith takes practice and belief is an ongoing challenge. Like Anne Lamott's, Winner's journey to Christendom is bumpy, but it is the rocky path itself that makes her a perfect guide to exploring spirituality in today's complicated world. Her engaging approach to religion in the twenty-first century is illuminating, thought-provoking, and most certainly controversial. Lauren F. Winner, the former book editor for Beliefnet.com, is a regular reviewer for Publishers Weekly and a contributing editor for Christianity Today. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times Book Review, the Washington Post Book World, and many other journals. She has degrees from Columbia and Cambridge Universities and is currently at work on her doctorate in the history of religion at Columbia. Oxford, Mississippi Back when Mississippi was dry, Ole Miss students and any other Oxford residents who wanted a drink would drive to Memphis, just across the state line, stock up on beer and whiskey, and haul it back in the trunks of their cars. Memphis was also where you went if you needed fancier clothes than you could find at Neilson's department store, or if you just started feeling itchy and trapped in the small hot downtown and wanted to go out dancing. You didn't need to leave Oxford to find a cherry Coke, which you could share with two straws at the Gathright-Reed drugstore, and you didn't need to leave Oxford to go to church. There are plenty of churches in Oxford: Baptist, Methodist, Pentecostal, Episcopal, all kinds. Before I arrived this week for a Southern history conference, I'd been to Oxford and Memphis exactly once each, on separate trips. I was a bridesmaid at my friend Tova's wedding in Memphis, at the Peabody, the famous hotel where ducks swim in an indoor fountain and where they say the Delta starts. I don't remember Oxford nearly as well-it had been the stop in between Nashville and Hattiesburg on a rather frantic research trip for my master's thesis, a blur of archives and oral history interviews. I hadn't gotten to do any traditional Oxford activities, like go to a tailgating party before a football game or recite an ode to Faulkner. My trip to Oxford this time might not be any more relaxed. I'm here giving a paper at a conference on the Civil Rights movement, and my schedule will be full just sitting in the auditorium and listening to historians talk. But the conference ends on Friday and I'm staying over till Sunday morning so my plan is to try to do one traditional Oxford thing on Saturday. It hasn't occurred to me that I'll spend Saturday doing the most traditional Oxford thing there is, which is going to Memphis. The conference, all in all, is stressful. Stressful because I feel very much the youthfu

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