Investigates how two seemingly disparate works of autobiography offer contrasting insight and experience into the human condition of spiritual emptiness. One comes from the realm of the sacred, offering a "spiritual roadmap" to redemption; the other (Hemingway's) is secular, "a form of literary therapy." In Augustine, the reader finds a "trajectory of hope" as the author reflects by way of a "lens of grace." Hemingway's story follows a "trajectory of despair" as he looks back on his life through a "lens of loss." Details the lives of each author, on parallel and intertwined tracks, to illustrate the differences and resonant similarities in their respective, existential journeys as well as the universality each can offer to modern considerations of spiritual suffering.