"An engrossing exploration of a hard but ultimately exhilarating trek toward love and commitment.” (Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review)

Rachel panicked as she lay awake on the first night of her year-long honeymoon—a backpacking trip around the world. Though young and in love, she wasn’t sure she actually believed in marriage, let alone the lofty Mormon ideal of eternal marriage. This unconventional honeymoon felt like a brief reprieve from the crushing expectations for a Mormon bride. But this trip also offered opportunities: the chance to study wedding traditions in other cultures and the space to confront what marriage—including her own—meant to her.

Along the way, she got kicked out of Peru, escaped rabid dogs in the Amazon, stumbled upon democracy protests in Hong Kong, launched an unlucky lantern in Thailand, and trekked five hundred miles across Spain in sandals. These experiences helped Rachel confront her tumultuous past, question her inherited relationship models, and embrace her restless nature within marriage—exchanging faith in certainty for faith in the day-to-day choice of partnership and faith in herself.

East Winds is written in the tradition of Elizabeth Gilbert’s Committed, Cheryl Strayed’s Wild, and Tara Westover’s Educated. Far more than a travelogue, this sweeping coming-of-age memoir offers timeless insights into this complex, universal institution. Too many love stories end with marriage. This one starts there instead.

Advance Praise

“[A] soulful debut memoir.... Rueckert’s reminiscences present readers with an evocative travelogue and a remarkably sensitive and insightful portrait of the difficulties of modern marriage and the compromises that one makes to feel both autonomy and connection.... Rueckert’s grappling with uncertainty yields courage and a luminous sense of hope. An engrossing exploration of a hard but ultimately exhilarating trek toward love and commitment.” (Kirkus Reviews, Starred Review)

"Is it an ethnography, a travelogue, a memoir, a love story, or a true confession? Whatever its genre, it is funny, inciteful, poetic, and engaging. A delightful read!" (Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, PhD, Pulitzer Prize winner and author of Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History)

"Trouble abounds in this brave, stirring, engaging memoir, but the protagonist proves equal to every bit of it, thanks to her self-awareness and pluck. A travel account that takes us deep into the author's inner life and spiritual struggles while delivering vividly detailed accounts of the lands she explores, this satisfying record of the growth of a self should please readers of every type. It certainly pleased me." (Phillip Lopate, PhD, American essayist and editor of The Art of the Personal Essay)

"Thoroughly smart and clear-eyed. East Winds invites the reader to question their assumptions. Rueckert asks unique questions that resonate on a universal level." (Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure)

"Rueckert is a writer to watch. In lovely, candid prose, she shares intimate insights about partnership and the connections that exist because of it. I could not put it down." (Wendy S. Walters, PhD, Nonfiction Concentration Director at Columbia University and author of Multiply/Divide)

"The writing is filled with funny, shivery, illuminated moments. East Winds brims with intelligence. " (Michael Greenberg, author of Hurry Down Sunshine)