Plant relies on previous biographies as well as interviews and correspondence with Hurston's friends and colleagues, to offer a portrait of a woman with an eclectic and searching sense of the spiritual in everyday life. Plant also explores the religious images in Hurston's work, the characters based on her own father, a preacher, and Hurston's understanding of the Baptist Church as well as other beliefs, including the voodoo practices of the West Indies. Hurston's appreciations of the transcendent in common people, her curiosity, and her own self awareness blended into an appreciation of the soul source that guided her life and her work. This is a compelling look at another side of one of the most significant literary figures of the Harlem Renaissance and American literature.
