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Travel Literary

What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim

A Midlife Misadventure on Spain's Camino de Santiago de Compostela

by (author) Jane Christmas

Publisher
Greystone Books Ltd
Initial publish date
Sep 2007
Category
Literary, Spain & Portugal
  • Paperback / softback

    ISBN
    9781553652403
    Publish Date
    Sep 2007
    List Price
    $26.95
  • eBook

    ISBN
    9781926685564
    Publish Date
    Sep 2007
    List Price
    $14.00
  • CD-Audio

    ISBN
    9781772560329
    Publish Date
    Jan 2017
    List Price
    $50.00
  • Audio disc

    ISBN
    9781772560336
    Publish Date
    Jan 2017
    List Price
    $26.00
  • Downloadable audio file

    ISBN
    9781772560343
    Publish Date
    Jan 2017
    List Price
    $20.00

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Description

A wickedly funny account of a woman's pilgrimmage of self-discovery on the infamous ""Camino"", the ancient road to Santiago de Compostela.

To celebrate her 50th birthday, Jane Christmas joins fourteen other women to hike the Camino de Santiago de Compostela, a centuries-old pilgrimage route stretching 800 kilometers from southwestern France across the Pyrenees almost to the northwestern shore of Spain. Somewhat against her will, she ends up as the nominal leader of fourteen other middle-aged women. Before she leaves, Christmas consults with a psychic, who warns of catfights, lost jewelry, encounters with celebrities, a visit from Death, and a fair-haired man.

After less than a week of travel with a mob of squabbling middle-aged women, some of whom have already started taking cabs, Christmas sets out on her own. That is when her real adventure begins, as she battles loneliness, hunger, and exhaustion, even hallucinating that comedian Steve Martin is her walking companion. She also encounters charming villages, thickly forested vales, and more compatible pilgrims. And she meets and falls in love with the fair-haired man. By the end of the journey, all of the psychic's predictions have come true, and Christmas has discovered that it is the detours of life that lead us to our heart's desires.

About the author

JANE CHRISTMAS is the author of several bestselling books, including What the Psychic told the Pilgrim, about her mid-life pilgrimage along Spain’s famed Camino trail; Incontinent on the Continent, about a six-week road trip through Italy with her elderly and opinionated mother in the hopes of finding a rapprochement in their relationship; as well as And Then There Were Nuns, which chronicles Jane’s discernment about entering religious life, and was a finalist for the 2014 Leacock Memorial Award for Humour. She has been published in Canada, the US, the UK, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal and Germany. Born and raised in Canada, Jane Christmas is the mother of three wonderful adults and the ex-wife of two kind-hearted husbands. In 2012, she moved to the UK, where she lives in southwest England with her current husband.

Jane Christmas' profile page