‘What a wondrous work! This beautifully created and totally clear-eyed account of his pilgrimage could have you thinking whether we ought to all embark on such a journey, either of your body, the spirit or, such as Egan’s case, both.’ –Cokie Roberts

‘If this book doesn’t quite settle the question of belief for you, it’ll at least fortify your trust in scrupulous reporting and captivating storytelling…Egan is indeed well informed, he starts to seem just like the world’s greatest tour guide. You follow in regards to a Pilgrimage to Eternity: From Canterbury to Rome searching for a Trust along as very much to listen to him talk concerning see the places. Reading it, you are feeling yourself in the presence of goodness — the type you might can simply decide to believe in.’ –The New York Situations

Among Oprah’s Must-Read Books of Fall 2019

Shifted by his mother’s death and his Irish Catholic family’s challenging history with the church, Timothy Egan made a decision to adhere to in the footsteps of centuries of seekers to force a reckoning with his own beliefs. He embarked on a thousand-mile pilgrimage through the theological cradle of Christianity, exploring one of the primary tales of our period: the collapse of religious beliefs in the globe that it produced. Egan sets out along the Via Francigena, after the major medieval path leading the devout to Rome, and makes his method overland via the alpine peaks and little mountain cities of France, Switzerland and Italy. The goal: walking to St. Peter’s Square, hoping of meeting the galvanizing pope who’s struggling to carry together the church through the most severe crisis in two a millennium.

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

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