ANGELS & ALIENS: A JOURNEY WEST

ANGELS & ALIENS: A JOURNEY WEST Mary Morris (Picador, $23) Aura healers, ''young and chatty'' UFO abductees, women who fly as angels through the Crystal Cathedral -- such were travel writer Morris' new friends when, in 1988, she left Manhattan for Orange County, Calif., to start afresh as the 40ish single mother of a newborn daughter. In this quirky, calmly confessional memoir-cum-travelogue, Morris recalls how she distracted herself from the painful breakup with her baby's commitment-phobic father by posing as a believer in a dizzying array of SoCal-style alternative faiths. Throughout her New Age forays, Morris forgoes satire for wry suspension of disbelief, discovering common ground between her own flight to California and her subjects' eccentric, earnest quests for a more meaningful life. B+