Heather Hamilton’s book, Returning to Eden, is a deeply personal, very readable and important story about her journey from the rigid, literalist world of evangelical Christianity to one where the Bible becomes a treasure trove of critically important stories that can guide one’s life toward a tangible realization of one’s own inner Christ. She clearly explains how both the Old and New Testaments can be read, and interpreted, as the poetry of myth rather than as a dogmatic history and list of unquestionable rules. Her own ‘Road to Damascus’ moment, which she reveals early in the narrative, is both powerful and perfectly timed for the turbulent moment in which we all find ourselves.

While the evangelical community is certainly Ms. Hamilton’s target audience, and should be read through that lens, it also has much to offer to those not only in other religious traditions, but to those who have rejected mythic/religious traditions altogether because of that rigidity and literalism that inspired the author on her own journey of self realization.

Heather Hamilton’s book provides an easily read roadmap to discovering, and interpreting, the metaphorical world of the Bible.