Evocative and moving. Downie brings a deep and impassioned knowledge of French history, culture, and language to this pilgrimage. The result is an extraordinary account that illuminates France past and present.
National Geographic Traveler
“An entertaining read. david downie is fabulous company!” —Jackie Lyden, All Things Considered , National Public Radio
“Downie’s adroit, learned, and ambitious book re-invigorates my sense of travel, taking me back to the happy knowledge that the world is still large, and history unfathomably deep.” —Frances Mayes, author of Under the Tuscan Sun
“David Downie is the master of educated curiosity. I have walked some of the city’s streets with him, and reading this book is just as tactile an experience.” —Michael Ondaatje
“Evocative and moving. Downie brings a deep and impassioned knowledge of French history, culture, and language to this pilgrimage. The result is an extraordinary account that illuminates France past and present.” —National Geographic Traveler
David Downie is the master of educated curiosity. I have walked some of the city’s streets with him, and reading this book is just as tactile an experience.
Downie’s adroit, learned, and ambitious book reinvigorates my sense of travel, taking me back to the happy knowledge that the world is still large, and history unfathomably deep.
Richly illustrated with Alison Harris’s color photographs, it is not only a fascinating journey through France on foot, with illuminating glimpses into French history from prehistoric times to the present. Downie also shares his idiosyncratic observations and provocative musings about connections between the Roman and American empires, the character of
Janet Hulstrand - Bonjour Paris
Bristling with knowledge and often with theinsights of good fiction, Downie takes you on a trip that is as much acompelling intellectual journey as it is a rich revelation of place. It’s ahard book to put down.
David Downie’s pilgrimage/anti-pilgrimage has two things no one else does. One is his inimitable wit. The other: he travels not just in space,
Evocative and moving … Downie’s quest is unconventional in tone and spirit as well as route. A lively wordsmith, Downie brings a deep and impassioned knowledge of French history, culture, and language to this pilgrimage. He also brings something more, a longing that he himself can’t pin down at the beginning… they encounter a memorable succession of taciturn, deep-rooted local farmers and gregarious, transplanted-from-Paris innkeepers. They also encounter the multi-layered, interweaving pathways of French history, commerce, religion, and spirituality—and manage to tuck in a few sumptuous celebrations of French food and wine, too. The result is an extraordinary account that illuminates France past and present and casts a light on something even greater: the truth that, however we choose to label our journey, we are all pilgrims on a common quest, to answer why we wander life’s question-paved path.
Don George - National Geographic Traveler
A great writer and a very interesting trail, what more could you want?
James Martin - About.com Europe Travel
Perhaps the most evocative American book about Paris since A Moveable Feast .
Brilliant, witty and stylish.
A wonderful book: historically, culturally and spiritually fascinating, refreshingly honest without being self-aggrandizing, full of humor and sharp observation of the people and the landscape. Downie is a great companion on the road.
An entertaining read… fabulous company!
Jackie Lyden - "All Things Considered
Richly textured, meticulously detailed, a compelling, picaresque narrative of adventures on the road and a sophisticated meditation on the past,
Evocative and moving… Downie’s quest is unconventional in tone and spirit as well as route. A lively wordsmith, Downie brings a deep and impassioned knowledge of French history, culture, and language to this pilgrimage. He also brings something more, a longing that he himself can’t pin down at the beginning… they encounter a memorable succession of taciturn, deep-rooted local farmers and gregarious, transplanted-from-Paris innkeepers. They also encounter the multi-layered, interweaving pathways of French history, commerce, religion,and spirituality—and manage to tuck in a few sumptuous celebrations of French food and wine, too. The result is an extraordinary account that illuminates France past and present and casts a light on something even greater: the truth that, however we choose to label our journey, we are all pilgrims on a common quest, to answer why we wander life’s question-paved path.
National Geographic Traveler - Don George
Beautifully written and refreshingly original. Curious and attentive to detail, Downie is appreciative yet unflinching in describing his adopted home.— David Armstrong
The San Francisco Chronicle
Downie is a saunterer, wandering down narrow ancient streets and picnicking in storied graveyards like Père-Lachaise. He captures the sort of people and places missed by those jetting from starred bistros to hotels with showers.— Dan Rubin
The Philadelphia Inquirer
Here Downie (Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light) details his 750-mile, 72-day trek from the Rue Saint Jacques in Paris to Roncesvalles in northern Spain. With his photographer wife, Alison Harris, he passes along Roman roads and storied pilgrimage trails, stops at hundreds of churches, chats with natives, and justifies his consumption of rich French meals with abundant exercise. Early on, the book is marred by condescending descriptions of people Downie encounters, along with heavy-handed reminders of the author's atheistic views. Fortunately, the author's tone changes as he gets deeper into the journey, growing humbler and more introspective without sacrificing his blunt honesty and occasional dark humor. A seasoned food and travel writer, Downie seamlessly interweaves his personal experience and reflections with a wealth of historical and mythological knowledge. Harris's candid photographs, taken throughout the trip, capture natural and human-made beauty, along with assorted weirdness. VERDICT Though Downie's commentary would appeal most to left-leaning skeptics, many scholars of world cultures, religion, and art history will enjoy and learn from this insightful travel memoir.—Christina Spallone, Philadelphia Yearly Meeting Lib.
Beset by the crises of middle age, an author and his photographer wife walk from Paris to the Pyrenees along the Way of Saint James. Just before he turned 50, food and travel writer Downie (Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light , 2011, etc.) discovered that his gluttonous ways had finally caught up to him. Doctors told him that he had become "in essence, a walking foie gras" and was in imminent danger of liver failure. Disillusioned as well by "the forced cleverness of corporate magazine writing," Downie decided to take time off to recover his health and rejuvenate his world-wearied spirit. A few days before Easter, he and his wife set off down the Rue Saint-Jacques, which marked the start of the route medieval pilgrims took from Paris to the shrine of St. James in Spain. Downie's desire to trek across France had little to do with any need to find God. "I hadn't escaped the gurus and drug culture of California to wind up Catholic in France," he writes. His journey--most of which would take him along old Roman roads and pilgrim routes that wound through the Burgundy countryside--was one he hoped would re-inspire him to ask the "big questions" that had once fired his imagination. Along the "maverick way" the couple followed (and which he documents with photographs), Downie was drawn to the way Celtic and Roman history intermingled in the landscape, architecture and people. He came to understand that however modern France appeared to be, it lived "simultaneously in the past and present." More profoundly, he realized that he was ultimately no different from the pilgrims who had walked "The Way" before him. His pilgrimage, like theirs, was "both the question and the answer" and a means to heightened awareness. A witty and intelligent spin on the spiritual-journey motif.
