This week we’re bringing you a conversation with Rachel Rueckert, a really amazing young writer who recently published a memoir called East Winds: A Global Quest to Reckon with Marriage.

Rachel’s story is a fascinating one. Perhaps due to a highly tumultuous home life as a child, she inherited her suspicions about marriage early. Growing up in the Church, there was a constant drumbeat about marriage and eternal families, but those lessons always seemed to raise more questions for her than they did answers.

Eventually, Rachel met her husband-to-be, Austin, and soon found herself on the adventure of a lifetime — a year-long backpacking trip on a shoestring budget that would serve as a honeymoon and bring her face to face with marriage in its stark reality. In between an escape from rabid dogs in the Amazon, accidentally stumbling upon democracy protests in Hong Kong, and a 500-mile trek through Spain in sandals, Rachel found a way to finally confront her deepest questions. This book is the incredibly insightful and beautifully written result, and we feel lucky to have, in a sense, gone in this journey with her.

In our conversation with Rachel, we were able to explore her “quest to reckon with marriage” as well as some other fascinating themes in the book: how does one learn to trust their intuition, or recognize the Spirit? How should life’s biggest decisions get made? And at Church in any community, how can we truly practice being brothers and sisters when we all have such different perspectives?

We’re so excited to share this conversation with you, and are confident in saying that you really need to pick up Rachel’s book. It was published by BCC Press, and is available online at Amazon or Barnes and Noble.