Murder on the Camino Pilgrimage?

 

Until a few days ago I had never heard of Dutch author Anya Niewierra. Perhaps i should be embarrassed because she is the Netherlands' number one bestselling author and has penned six books. In my defense, only one has been translated into English, the murder mystery/thriller The Camino which has sold 800,000 copies in her homeland.

 I'm well into it having been drawn by the title on the "new releases" shelf at the library. The Camino, or The Way,  is one of the most famous and ancient of pilgrimages in the Christian world, from the 10th century onwards. There are actually several routes with the longest one, about 800 kilometres, beginning in France and concluding in the Spanish city of Santiago de Compostela. It is now a UNESCO World Heritage Site. 

The key character in the novel undertakes the Camino exactly one year after the shocking suicide of her husband while he was doing a solo pilgrimage to celebrate recovery from cancer. She had no intimation that he would take his own life, and makes the trek as way to address her ongoing grief, following almost exactly his route on his timeline. Along the way she uncovers some of the mystery of his childhood and early adulthood in the former Yugoslavia and in doing so puts herself in peril. I'm enjoying it -- God bless libraries. 

Both the husband and the wife are atheists yet there is a sense that on their journey both find solace in places of worship in various communities with all their Christian symbolism. A famed chocolatier, she makes a side trip to a convent renowned for its chocolate and discovers that her husband had visited the same location, although he hadn't mentioned it in his daily texts. 

This "not religious but spiritual" undercurrent is consistent with the realities of the Camino today. While participation in this demanding pilgrimage is growing -- roughly 200,000 walkers a year -- many do so for reasons other than faith as the principal motivation.

 I know three people who have walked the Camino, one who assured me with a bit of a scoff that it was more for the physical challenge than faith, while another is an always sincere but sometimes tentative Christian who wanted to prove he could do it in his early 50s (he completed it.) I would say that the person with the strongest Christian intention was our son, Isaac, who walked the longest route, alone, when he was nineteen. As parents we were somewhat trepidatious but he reeled off an average of about 30+ kilometres a day with the enthusiasm of youth. 

I would endorse the novel, even though I have about 75 pages to go. It's certainly a way to experience the Camino without developing blisters or braving inclement weather.