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A PILGRIMAGE TO ETERNITY

Timothy Egan

From Canterbury to Rome in Search of a Faith

Tracing an ancient pilgrimage route from Canterbury to Rome, the bestselling and "virtuosic" (The Wall Street Journal) writer explores the past and future of Christianity.
At a time when Britain, America, and much of Europe have never been so secular--and when his mother's death and his Irish Catholic family's complicated history with the church prompted a reckoning with his own beliefs -- Timothy Egan decided to follow in the footsteps of centuries of seekers. He embarked on a thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity, to explore one of the biggest stories of our time: the collapse of religion in the world that it created. Egan sets out along the Via Francigena, once the major medieval trail leading the devout to Rome, and makes his way overland via the alpine peaks and small mountain towns of France, Switzerland and Italy. The goal: walking to St. Peter's Square, in hopes of meeting the galvanizing pope who is struggling to hold together the church through the worst crisis in half a millennium.

Making his way through a landscape laced with some of the most important shrines to the faith, Egan finds a modern Canterbury Tale in the chapel where Queen Bertha introduced Christianity to pagan Britain; parses the supernatural in a French town built on miracles; and journeys to the oldest abbey in the Western world, founded in 515 and home to continuous prayer over the 1,500 years that have followed. He is accompanied by a quirky cast of fellow pilgrims and by some of the towering figures of the faith--Joan of Arc, Henry VIII, Martin Luther.

A thrilling journey, a family story, and a revealing history, A Pilgrimage to Eternity looks for our future in its search for God.

Timothy Egan is a Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter and the author of eight other books, most recently The Immortal Irishman, a New York Times bestseller. His book on the Dust Bowl, The Worst Hard Time, won a National Book Award for nonfiction. His account of photographer Edward Curtis, Short Nights of the Shadow Catcher, won the Carnegie Medal for nonfiction. He writes a biweekly opinion column for The New York Times.
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Published 2019-10-15 by Viking

Comments

"A Pilgrimage to Eternity is one of Egan's best books, a moving combination of history and memoir, travelogue and soul-searching, buoyed by Egan's strengths as a writer: color and humor, a sense of wonder and a gift for getting to the point."

"A Pilgrimage to Eternity" is both an engaging travelog and a meditative exploration of how religion and history have woven the tapestry of Europe together. It is also a brutal surgery on the soul trying to clear out the cancer of broken promises from the Church. It has more questions than answers, but they are the right questions to get a reader walking along the road to. somewhere. Making the journey is more important than arriving. Egan has illustrated that with deftness and brilliance."

..."A Pilgrimage to Eternity" is both an engaging travelog and a meditative exploration of how religion and history have woven the tapestry of Europe together. It is also a brutal surgery on the soul trying to clear out the cancer of broken promises from the Church. It has more questions than answers, but they are the right questions to get a reader walking along the road to. somewhere. Making the journey is more important than arriving. Egan has illustrated that with deftness and brilliance. Read more...

Egan has a gift for sweeping narrative . . . and he has a journalist's eye for the telltale detail . . . This is masterly work.

Whether read as a travelogue, history or personal spiritual quest, A PILGRIMAGE TO ETERNITY will enlighten and entertain its audience. ...this journey is both mesmerizing and uplifting. Read more...

Few writers have the Pulitzer Prize-winning Egan's gift for transforming history lessons into the stuff of riveting page-turners.

"Interspersing the historical with the personal, Egan's chronicle of the journey leads to his epiphany that 'there is noway. The way is made by walking.'"

From the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Award winner, a pilgrimage to find religion - or truth, or the way - that pleasingly blends memoir, travelogue, and history. .Finding people and places warm and welcoming in each village and city, allowing himself to be amazed, lingering to rest blistered feet, and discovering soul-stirring spotsall this kept Egan pushing on, and readers will be thankful for his determination. A joy and a privilege to read.

Egan's historical chops are on show throughout his journey. His well-regarded books on Irish and American history have in the past demonstrated his engagement with history as something we grapple with in our everyday lives, but in this book his personal history is interlaced with the journey into the past.Egan is an engaging narrator, aware of the American problems that he has dragged with him to Europe. Read more...

What a wondrous work! Somehow Egan has pulled together what seems like the entire history of Christianity, the scenes and succulents of much of Europe, and his own personal story into an engrossing narrative. This beautifully written and totally clear-eyed account of his pilgrimage from Canterbury to Rome will have you wondering whether we should all embark on such a journey, either of the body, the soul or, as in Egan's case, both.

... [S]crupulous reporting and captivating storytelling... A Pilgrimage to Eternity is a stunningly comprehensive history of both Christianity and Western Europe... Egan is so well informed, he starts to seem like the world's greatest tour guide. You follow along as much to hear him talk as to see the sights. It feels as if there's nothing he hasn't digested for the reader, and his extraordinary reliability is reminiscent of that of the monks he describes so evocatively throughout the book. Read more...