A strange, and strangely tenacious genre presents powerful and often unbelievable spiritual experiences under the rubric of nonfiction. This tradition goes back at least as far as Dante's Divine Comedy, but rebloomed in the transcedence-starved 1970s with popular books like Robert M. Pirsig's Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Carlos Castaneda's Don Juan books and thrives into the 1990s with titles like Terrence McKenna's True Hallucinations and, most recently, Elizabeth Jenkins' Initiation: A Woman's Spiritual Journey in the Heart of the Andes.

Initially, Jenkins is a family therapist whose spiritual longings are unsatisfied by the rationalistic approach of modern Western psychology. She acts on an inspiration to go to Cuzco, Peru — the spiritual capital of the Inca empire — to learn about the spiritual path of the Incas.

This spiritual practice revolves around, among other elements, the earth spirit Pachamama, intermediate spirits known as apus, and spiritual levels that humans can strive to achieve. Jenkins becomes the only white woman admitted to a group that holds seance-like ceremonies; with this group, she has bizarre and eye-opening experiences. She later connects with a better teacher who encourages her to bring several seekers from the U.S. to Peru and collectively work toward reaching higher levels of spiritual consciousness. This bare-bones summary may seem simple, or even banal, but Jenkins creates an appealing narrative full of vivid descriptions.

Like the other books mentioned above, Initiation calls into question the line between fiction and nonfiction. Are these stories meant to be taken as literal truth, or do they use fictional methods to evoke a sense of wonder analogous to that of mystical experience? Or are they merely yarns spun to entertain? And if a book does evoke a sense of mystical wonder, does it matter if it's true?

Whether or not we believe in the truth of Jenkins' story, Initiation works because Jenkins has lucidly imagined the details of both the geographical journeys through South America, and the spiritual journeys that Jenkins and her cohorts take under the tutelage of Peruvian spiritual teachers. When I say "imagined," this is not to accuse her of making it all up; imagination can be as important in remembering and describing real life as it is in creating fiction. Though Jenkins is trained in clinical psychology and works as a family counselor, Initiation is, for the most part, refreshingly low on both psychobabble and New Age jargon. Jenkins uses and defines plenty of terms in Quechua (the language of the Incas) and does take time to analyze her feelings and experiences, but she has the confidence to let her descriptions convey the power of the spiritual experiences. Where other writers might have jumbled up the book with abstractions, Jenkins translates all her experiences — whether real of fictive — into concrete, vivid imagery that appeals to all the senses.