This is a story of a young man who has just graduated from college and he takes off to Costa Rica to live with his girlfriend, the story is written in first person, like a diary, it's very stream of consciousness, the character writes every day that he is there giving details about each day in this foreign land, the obstacles he is forced to overcome and forced to see his family and country back home from a different perspective, through out the course of the journey he grows and matures in ways he never imagined and finds natural happiness despite facing extreme depression and loneliness in the beginning, one of the central issues in the book is the characters lack of faith and his search for God, everyone he seems to meet has this strong relationship with God and the principle character is trying to figure out why he is an atheist, it is also a love story for towards the end of his journey he meets a special partner and they fall in love with each other.