The Pilgrim Soul in You: A Story of Love, Loss, and Redemption

The Pilgrim Soul in You is the poignant narrative of Will Merritt, a bright college graduate from the East who moves to San Francisco in the early '80s to pursue his MBA. There he meets Laura McKenzie, a beautiful, young law student from a prominent Northern California family. The two are drawn to one another by a similar sad event in their past and that connection fosters a relationship that blossoms into affection and commitment. Love proves to be the "miracle of sudden intimacy" he tells her not long after they meet.Will's job at a conservative brokerage firm on Montgomery Street, and Laura's work at a liberal, environmental conservation non-profit, reveals a complex and challenging world beyond their academic lives. Surrounded by questionable business practices in the go-go era of high-flying tech company IPO's during the Reagan administration, they dedicate themselves to irreproachable ideals because of their caring and unwavering devotion to one another. Laura and Will help organize an AIDS benefit, serve meals to the homeless in the Tenderloin, and deal head-on with her brother's drug and alcohol addiction. The romantic notion of an inherent goodness in people, and the redeeming nature of life's inexorable justice, seems real and palpable. Everything in their lives is amazing until a phone call devastates this belief. Will the intimate bond they've forged triumph over this adversity? Can bliss really be fleeting when two people are so in love? Will Merritt's story is both his unique journey and the timeless telling of universal themes of love, loss, and the inevitable search for inner peace. Early on, his life experiences provide him with an awareness of the unrealized potential in people which produces an innate, nurturing influence towards helping others achieve their dreams. Despite this kindness, he is not without personal anguish when he suffers his own heartache, but through that journey he discovers the friends he has helped along the way are in fact his path to redemption-that despite its changing nature and composition, family is the most important element of life.