I really enjoyed this book. Egan is so open with what she was feeling during her pilgrimage, and the effect it had on her. She describes her grief in language and style that made it easy to share her grief with her (like it or not!). And to add the spiritual dimension to all of this, and for her to show her growing knowledge of God -- that was a real blessing. ( )

A lovely read of one woman's pilgrimage on the Camino de Santiago as she struggled with her (dis)belief in God (taking a break from working on a divinity masters from Harvard) after her father's death. During the physical toil of walking eight to ten hours a day under the hot sun with her sometimes irritating boyfriend, she comes to find that grief is a form of prayer and that one can learn to live in the present when you let go of trying to control the past.

My second Camino de Santiago memoir in as many months . . . makes me want to step out of my own familiar rhythms to seek answers in an unfamiliar country and activity. ( )

When you write a travel book, you can either (Type A) know up front that you are headed off on a trip where you will write about your adventures, necessitating the having of adventures and/or the elaboration of adventures OR(Type B) You can set off on a trip, have some amazing adventures, and then talk a publisher into letting you write a book about what happened, though you may have forgotten (i.e., have to make up) many details.This book strikes me as Type A. Egan decided to take a trip to mourn the death of her father and write a book as she traveled. Nothing much happened. If you cut out all the spliced in essays on pilgrimages and saints and grieving, the book would be about ten pages. I liked this book just fine, but I'd been hoping for a transformational read, and it never felt like that to me. Instead, I kept wanting to shout, "Filler!" every time Egan ventured off the Camino into one tangent or another. ( )

One of the least informative or interesting books that I have read on the Camino de Santiago. ( )