Walking Through Sunflowers: Through Deepest France on the Road to Compostela

Dehydration, sunburn, exhaustion, and monster blisters populate Fainberg’s emotionless account of the Camino de Santiago pilgrimage through France and Spain. After Fainberg and her husband, Patrick, spent over a month walking 300 miles of the Camino de Santiago pilgrim route across Spain to the shrine of St. James the Apostle in 2002, they returned in 2003 to walk 500 miles of the French Le Puy branch from Haute-Loire to the Spanish border, a two-month journey. Fainberg dryly recounts their journey, for which they are ill-prepared, lacking proper footwear and food for their vegetarian diet. Fainberg and Patrick walk at different paces, which sparks a debate: is the pilgrimage the walk itself, carried out in quiet prayer, or is it visiting all the holy sites along the way? A surprising dearth of emotional insight leaves only a straightforward diary account of sites seen and people met, with little spiritual contemplation. Fainberg, who frequently takes short cuts on the journey that cut out certain shrines, only briefly explains at the end that “the act of walking, though, itself becomes a form of devotion. Not because it’s painful... but just because.” Fainberg’s enjoyable research into the heritage of the region is the sole saving grace of this poorly organized book. (BookLife)