What the psychic told the pilgrim

What the Psychic told the Pilgrim - a midlife misadventure on the Camino de Santiago de Compostela - is a hilarious and bittersweet memoir about the Camino, the politics of women, managing expectations, and living by intuition.

To celebrate her 50th birthday, Jane Christmas joins fourteen other women to hike the Camino de Santiago de Compostela - a centuries-old pilgrimage route stretching 800 kilometres from southwestern France across the Pyrenees almost to the northwestern shore of Spain. Before she leaves, Christmas consults with a psychic, who warns of cat fights, lost jewellery, encounters with celebrities, a visit from Death, and a fair-haired man.

After less than a week of travel with a mob of squabbling middle-aged women, some of whom have already started taking taxis, Christmas sets out on her own. That is when her real adventure begins, as she battles loneliness, hunger, exhaustion and hallucinations that comedian Steve Martin is her walking companion. She also encounters charming villages, thickly forested vales, and more compatible pilgrims. And she meets and falls in love with the fair-haired man.

By the end of the journey, all of the psychic’s predictions have come true, and Christmas has discovered that it is the detours of life that lead us to our heart’s desires.

About the Author

Previously an editor of Canada’s National Post, these days Jane Christmas describes herself as a “mother, author, and gypsy-pilgrim”.

Her first book titled The Pelee Project: One Woman’s Escape from Urban Madness, was published in 2002. In 2004, she was again bitten by a desire to leave the noise of modern life behind, and embarked on an 800-kilometre pilgrimage with 14 other middle-aged women. She lives in southern Ontario, Canada.