Star Weiss moved to British Columbia from New York State in 1972. "Once displaced, I, like the early white settlers to B.C., felt free to start over, discard old notions and come up with a new way of seeing the world and the big questions that come with it," she says. Some 36 years later, after living on Quadra Island and at Maple Bay in the Cowichan Valley, Weiss gathered the guidance of a variety of B.C. residents, particularly First Nations people, to visit 44 sites where peace, serenity and renewal have been experienced on the West Coast. Three sites are on Haida Gwai, 33 sites are on Vancouver Island. "In British Columbia especially, the natural landscape is the reference point many of us use when we reflect on what is sacred," writes Weiss in Havens in a Hectic World: Finding Sacred Places.

As Star Weiss-Fuoco she previously published Kitchen Culture: The Lives and Foods of Immigrant Women, a spin-off of a cable TV show, and she contributed to Chicken Soup for the Nature Lover's Soul (Health Communications, Inc. 2004). Please visit starweiss.ca.