After a split second it was over, and I was tasting linoleum. Turns out my wife had a mean left hook. I think I briefly saw God, or at least a ceiling fan that looked like Him. After a few years I went looking for Him, sort of. Thanks to being steamrolled by divorce, suicidal dreams, and a creeping suspicion that modern life is a dumpster fire, I strapped on a 35-pound backpack and stumbled across Spain’s ancient Camino de Santiago with the grace of a wounded buffalo.

I’m not saying I found God, but while surviving on bocadillos, blister tape, and sarcasm, every step I took on the Camino peeled away the pain, as the wind, dust, and the voices of strangers became sacred companions in my healing. In my case though, the road to redemption was paved with farting bunkmates, cheap Rioja, and just enough grace to keep going.

And even though I left friends, family, and a country riddled with cultural chaos, consumer madness, and too many Instagram influencers, in the end this is the story of a man who set out broken and found, somewhere between the laughter, silence and shared suffering, that grace might still exist, and that maybe the soul doesn’t disappear—it just gets very, very tired, and needs a long walk to remember itself.

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Part of the proceeds from the sale of this book  
will go to The Organization For Autism Research