The Girl and the Philosopher is about a young woman whose flight from tragedy becomes an epic journey not unlike Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. Her journey inspires, amazes, and frightens. But what inspires, amazes, and frightens is not an imagined fantasy world, but reality, the reality of the world we live in seen through the looking glasses of science, history, philosophy, art and, of course, the lives of the characters. What is revealed about our world and about ourselves is both amazing and deeply disturbing.
The word philosophy means the love of wisdom. Wisdom, however, cannot be achieved without knowledge, and the goal of this story is to provide knowledge that leads to wisdom, knowledge taken from philosophy, science, religion and art. The Girl and the Philosopher is intended for young women interested acquiring knowledge from the thinkers discussed in the story. The story is not a pacifier. There is political folly, war, rape, cancer, and death. The story is serious business because life is serious business. Yet, there are profoundly positive values such as love, friendship, and beauty, but as Buddha discovered, they are continually threatened by the forces of nature-sickness, old age, and death. However, the greatest threat to the life-world is masculine aggression, especially in the form of war.