That decision created a divide between him and his sister Ruthie, who was firmly attached to Starhill. Leaving for boarding school was "the fork in the road for us, the moment in our lives in which we diverged," he writes in his new book, The Little Way of Ruthie Leming: A Southern Girl, a Small Town, and the Secret of a Good Life.

In the book, he describes leaving his Starhill home to pursue a career in journalism—a career that took him to cities like Baton Rouge, Washington DC, Fort Lauderdale, Dallas, New York, and Philadelphia. He was chasing after a bigger and better career with each move. "I was caught up in a culture of ambition," Dreher told me me in an interview.

While Dreher was a dreamer, Ruthie was satisfied with what she had. When Dreher was living in big cities, going to fancy restaurants, carousing with media types, writing film reviews for a living, and traveling to Europe, Ruthie was back home in Louisiana, living down the road from her parents, starting a family of her own, and devoting herself to her elementary school students as a teacher. Ruthie could not understand Dreher's lifestyle. Why would he want to leave home for a journalism career? Wasn't Starhill good enough? Did Rod think he was better than all of them?

Alli Polin/Flickr

These "invisible walls" stood between Ruthie and Dreher when, on Mardi Gras of 2010, Ruthie was unexpectedly diagnosed with terminal lung cancer— devastating news that ripped through her community "like a cyclone" says Dreher, who was living in Philadelphia at the time. She was a healthy non-smoking 40-year-old, beloved by her students, her neighbors, her three daughters, and her husband. Now, she had about three months to live. She actually lived for nineteen. On September 15, 2011, Ruthie passed away.

Watching her struggle with terminal cancer for 19 months, and seeing her small-town community pour its love into supporting her, was a transformational experience for Dreher. "There are some things that we really cannot do by ourselves," Dreher said. "When Ruthie got sick, there were things that her family could not do—they couldn't get the kids to school without help, they couldn't get meals on the table without help, they couldn't pay the bill without help. It really took a village to care for my sick sister. The idea that we are self-reliant is a core American myth."

When news spread of Ruthie's cancer, some friends planned an aid concert to raise money for her medical bills. Hundreds of people came together, raising $43,000 for their friend. "This is how it's supposed to be," someone told Dreher that night. "This is what folks are supposed to do for each other."

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The conflict between career ambition and relationships lies at the heart of many of our current cultural debates, including the ones sparked by high-powered women like Sheryl Sandberg and Anne Marie Slaughter. Ambition drives people forward; relationships and community, by imposing limits, hold people back. Which is more important? Just the other week, Slate ran a symposium that addressed this question, asking, "Does an Early Marriage Kill Your Potential To Achieve More in Life?" Ambition is deeply entrenched into the American personae, as Yale's William Casey King argues in Ambition, A History: From Vice to Virtue­—but what are its costs?