"Once Upon a Camino" by Matthew Wilson

Actor Martin Sheen starred in the 2010 movie The Way, a story of a father who walks the Camino de Santiago to connect with his son who died in an accident on the trail. The 400-mile pilgrimage crosses northern Spain, from the French border to Santiago de Compostela in northwest Spain, is based on a true story. The Camino is actually much longer, a network of routes stretching across Europe, but it it’s the Spanish segment that is the best known. The movie was released in 2010, but re-released this year.

Australian writer Matthew Wilson walked the Camino in 2010, and his experience became the basis for his second novel, Once Upon a Camino. It’s a story full of improbables, including time travel, but it rather surprisingly works, and works well.

 

Tom Anderson is a 20-something London investment banker, full of thoughts about his career and his girlfriend Ana, who’s Spanish but also lives and works in London. Tom wants to marry her, and off he goes to Spain to ask her grandfather for his blessing. Ana’s parents had died in an automobile accident, and she was raised by her grandparents.

 

Matthew Wilson

The grandfather, however, throws a wrench into Tom’s plans. To prove his love, the grandfather tells Tom he must walk the 400-miles Camino de Santiago. Tom’s up for the challenge, sort of, and he takes a train to the starting point and promptly falls asleep. When he awakes, the train journey has ended, he’s alone, his backpack (including his passport and mobile phone charger) is missing, and all he has left is his Apple iPhone, which has little battery left.

 

Then he discovers that it’s not 2010 but 1954, and he finds himself stumbling into the pilgrimage and trying to understand what has happened. He walks with a few companions, and their story gradually becomes part of his story. He will learn that one of his companions is the considerably younger grandfather of Ana, and that he himself has a mission to accomplish. If he fails, Ana will never be born.

 

Once Upon a Camino is a story of love, pilgrimage, sacrifice, and redemption. Tom Anderson will find himself attacked, stabbed, hunted by the national police, and often questioning his own sanity. And he will learn about true love being the act of self-sacrifice.

 

Wilson previously published The Devil’s in the Detail (2012). He lives in Melbourne, Australia.

Some Monday Readings

 

On Shakespeare’s Two Heroic Friends That Saved the Bard’s Plays From Being Burned – Gregory Doran at Literary Hub.

 

Van Gogh would have loved to have seen the National Gallery’s exhibition on Hals – Martin Bailey at The Art Newspaper.

 

Kayaking with Lambs – Brian Miller at Front Porch Republic.

 

From A to Z, the Abecedarian Isn’t Just for Chaucer – Poetry Prompt! – Tweetspeak Poetry.