What if three Buddhist lamas showed up at your American doorstep, claiming that your five-year-old son was the seventh reincarnation of the illustrious Tibetan lama Norbu Rinpoche? Such is the fate of Evelyn Bednarz, the strange and unlikely heroine of David Guterson’s seventh novel. But before all of that transpires, we’re engrossed by the waypoints in Evelyn’s journey.

Evelyn learns at a young age that her size, manner and temperament will bar her from what others call normal. Her older sister, Maureen, is obsessed with boys and fashion, but Evelyn couldn’t care less. She doesn’t waste time on self-pity or suffer fools gladly. At the end of a book report delivered to a roomful of sniggering classmates, she asks for questions. There are none. “‘Okay,’ said Evelyn. ‘I hate you guys.’” She finds solace in hard work and doing it well, whether it is dishwashing, cleaning erasers or babysitting. “She liked to mow the lawn perfectly, but only if no one told her to mow. If she got told to mow, it wasn’t the same.”

"Much of EVELYN IN TRANSIT consists of stories in spare, tight prose that leaves you to draw your own conclusions.... Guterson doesn’t shy away from the cruelty and venality of some of the characters, but his wry compassion for human nature also shines through."

Evelyn’s school life is fraught with teasing, misunderstandings and the inevitable punishments that accrue to a nonconformist. Her father is laid off when the Mesker plant in Evanston closes. He moves to Bloomington, Indiana, leaving her mom, sister and brother behind, but Evelyn goes with him. She tries a school there for kids who “don’t do well in a structured environment,” but soon it’s summer and she’s back in Evanston, where she hits the road. “It was late June. She could sleep outside. Nothing would be any better or worse than the next thing…. Whatever it was, it would be her own doing. All she wanted was to live the right way, if that wasn’t asking too much from life.”

Juxtaposed with Evelyn’s story is that of a very different young person on the other side of the world in Tibet. Tsering Lepka lives simply with his family until he’s sent to live with his uncle Samten, where he still lives simply, but also learns to read and write. When monks come to help his uncle, they discover the boy and some auspicious facts about him. He ends up leaving his family to become a monk in a well-known monastery, where his teacher confirms that he is the sixth in his line of abbots. This means years of strenuous study before he receives the title Norbu Rinpoche. And it means, finally, expulsion from Tibet when China invades.

Much of EVELYN IN TRANSIT consists of stories in spare, tight prose that leaves you to draw your own conclusions. In particular, Evelyn’s wandering adventures are episodic in nature, like parables. Guterson doesn’t shy away from the cruelty and venality of some of the characters, but his wry compassion for human nature also shines through. What does it mean to live the right way? How can beliefs and doubts help or hinder us on that path? The novel is illuminated by Tsering’s Buddhist philosophy on these universal questions. When an American priest confides to Tsering that he thinks his doubts are contributing to his depression, Tsering’s advice is compassionate but succinct: “By definition, all beliefs imply doubt…. Don’t say death is only acceptable if it is followed by eternal life. Let belief be belief. Accept death with no conditions.”

Each of Guterson’s books depart from their predecessors’ territory in style, setting and substance. To be fair, they all explore big questions, but this one does so in a unique way, weaving the tales of characters across decades and continents. A sense of play animates this novel; it feels like Guterson had fun writing it, and I certainly had fun reading it. EVELYN IN TRANSIT is less about what happens towards the end when the lamas show up at the door, and more about what happens in transit. Which just might be true for all of us.