The Singular Pilgrim: Travels on Sacred Ground

Sometimes purposeful, sometimes footloose, the act of undertaking a pilgrimage is "both a preparation for death and a hedge against it." So writes Rosemary Mahoney, who knows well whereof she speaks. A reluctant churchgoer, and less interested in religion per se than in the faith that underlies it, she travels in this absorbing narrative to some of the world’s great pilgrimage sites: Ireland’s Croagh Patrick, Lourdes, Santiago de Compostela, Canterbury, the banks of the Ganges. "As I got into the rhythm of it," she writes, "I found that the more I walked, the more I wanted to walk." Walk she does, over hundreds of miles, observing and recording along the way, talking with ascetics and skeptics, joining the multitude whose physical beings wander in order that their minds might turn toward the divine. And to what end is all this hard slogging? "Dunno, really," one of Mahoney’s fellow travelers shrugs. "When it’s done, you feel very good about it." Fans of travel narratives and religious memoirs alike will find much pleasure, and much on which to reflect, in Mahoney’s pages. --Gregory McNamee