El Camino

El Camino (Spanish for "the way") is a day-by-day account of a modern American pilgrim's solitary walk from St. Jean Pied de Port in France, across the Pyrenees and northern Spain, to Santiago de Compostela, believed since medieval times to be the burial place of Saint James. During thirty-two days in 1993, Lee Hoinacki trod the 500-mile route followed by Europeans for more than a thousand years, stopping each evening at pilgrim hospices, some centuries-old, to write in his diary. His reflections range from the historical examination of religious sensibility to analyses of modern developments in architecture and technology, from the theological understanding of place to the mentality of mountain bike riders. Readers share in the personal religious growth of a traditional Roman Catholic who, toward the end of his life, finds himself in the welcome company of those who walked the same camino during the past centuries. The constant interplay between pertinent anecdotes from well-chosen fellow pilgrims, both ancient and modern, and Hoinacki's experiences of contemporary Spanish customs and behavior give the book a captivating timelessness and spiritual insight rarely found in other modern chronicles of the pilgrimage to Santiago.

Beyond its central premise, the book can be read through the connected lenses of Nonfiction. Those themes offer useful points of attention as the characters, ideas, or world develop, especially where the book complicates the expectations of its primary category.