A car skids on black ice on Avenue Road in Toronto. As the unnamed narrator lies badly injured by the roadside, the souls of his fellow victims, lover Elle and his father, slip “like eels, electric shadows” deep into their survivor. Released from hospital, he sets out on a journey of grief. Elle has been buried, but the ashes of his painter-father accompany him across the world.

Batten’s lyrical first novel moves from the U.S. to Fiji, New Zealand, Australia, and beyond. The plot advances, geographically and through a series of encounters, but for all the vast distances covered, this is an intensely interior book. We catch a vivid gesture or hear a voice speak; then the focus is swiftly pulled by painful memory, or broadened and generalized with allusion to music, painting, or spiritual writings.

Batten makes constant use of the symbolism and trappings of Christianity, but his narrator’s quest to find new juice in the church’s “old, dried-up wineskins” takes him far beyond orthodoxy. Spiritual insight comes more reliably through the soles of the feet, solitude, the generosity of strangers, the pressing of flesh. It is flesh that effects a major psychological shift: in Australia, working in a restaurant, the narrator meets a Russian woman named Ana. But there’s still a supply of Father’s ashes to scatter, from Singapore on to Europe and an ancient pilgrim trail through France to Santiago de Compostella at the western tip of Spain.

Though the imagery is painstakingly crafted and sustained, readers may find the text relentlessly poetic and aphoristic at times. In spite of the occasional heavy going, JourneyMind is still an enjoyable novel. The narrator’s unfolding bereavement is compelling, and it is hard not to admire his ardent impulse to find a meaningful way to live in the world.