When Dominique arrives in Roquebrun, France to visit her old art school friend Julia, it is with mixed feelings of impatience and resignation. Impatience with being forced to take a vacation from her Winnipeg
architectural firm and at the presence of Julia's cynical brother Colin, and resignation to the loss of her once loving but now broken ex-husband, not to mention her career as an artist.
As the trio take their first steps on the 700-kilometre pilgrimage that will lead them through the north of Spain to Santiago de Compostela, Dominique wants nothing more than to hop a train and head home. At the age of 42, she is ready to give up on her dreams for new love, a life in art and a family to grow old with. Her attitude changes as the trio walks the dusty white camino that so many centuries of pilgrims have walked before them and are joined along the way by Deidre from Ireland and Neil from Vermont.
As the five of them travel, sharing the tragedies of their lives, and discussing history, faith and art, Dominique begins to soften. Perhaps it isn't too late for her to find happiness and renewed love-to wash away the sins of a squandered life. And as a new love blossoms, Dominique begins to wonder if anything has been squandered; if her journey is almost over or just beginning; and if, perhaps, it really is the journey that matters most, and not where it leads one to.

Simone Chaput is a Franco-Manitoban and two-time winner of Le Prix littéraire la Liberté (for her novels Un Piano dans le Noir and La Vigne Amère) at the Manitoba Writing and Publishing Awards.

Simone Chaput's profile page