On Pilgrimage

Having completed a series of painful cancer treatments, British novelist Jennifer Lash sets forth on a pilgrimage through historic Christian (and one Buddhist) sites in France and Spain. A lapsed Catholic who feels intensely connected to various Catholic saints but decidedly disconnected from Catholicism itself, Lash does not herself fully understand why she has undertaken this journey. But however uncertain her motives, her prose is strong and distinctive, as in this description of the mountainous route to Santiago de Compostela: "This dry, deserted land felt as if it was a spiral of smoke curling its way up and up, far from the cities and traffic and people below." Lash does not try to impose any artificial story arc or "lesson" on her book, which begins with her arrival in Alencon, home of 19th-century saint Therese Martin, and ends in Santiago de Compostela, possible final resting place of James the Apostle. Between these two points she treats us to snippets of civic and religious history, insights into her own life, and glimpses of an ancient method of reaching for personal peace and healing: the pilgrimage. --Rebecca Gleason