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A route guide tells you where the next albergue is. It cannot tell you what the third week feels like, why pilgrims weep at the Cruz de Ferro, or what a person thinks about for six hours on the Meseta with nothing to look at. That is what memoirs are for, and the Camino has produced more of them than any other pilgrimage on earth.
It has also produced a great deal of unedited walking diary. The shelf is crowded, and a Catholic pilgrim looking for one book to read before departure is not well served by a list ranked on sales alone. So the thirteen books below are grouped by the one thing that changes how a Camino book reads more than anything else: the tradition the writer was walking in.
Every title has been checked against the Amazon listing it links to. Novels are left out, which removes Paulo Coelho's The Pilgrimage — first-person and often shelved as memoir, but described by his own foundation as an autobiographical novel. Shirley MacLaine's The Camino is left out because it does not treat the pilgrimage as what the Church understands it to be.
Written from inside the Church
These three are the place to start for a Catholic reader. In each, the sacraments, the daily Mass and the tomb of the Apostle are the point of the journey rather than the scenery it passes.
Fr Kevin A. Codd — To the Field of Stars: A Pilgrim's Journey to Santiago de Compostela
Camino Francés, 2003 · 35 days · a priest of the Diocese of Spokane
Codd walked from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago in the summer of 2003, while serving as rector of the American College in Leuven, and gave each brief chapter to one or two days on the road. The result is the closest thing the English-language Camino shelf has to a standard work: a priest's account, unhurried, attentive to the ordinary business of blisters and beds, and clear about what the walk is finally for. In 2007 he set out again from the college's front door in Belgium and walked through France to Santiago; that journey became a second book, Beyond Even the Stars.
Fr Greg J. Markey — Discovering the Camino de Santiago: A Priest's Journey to the Tomb of St. James
Camino Francés, 2009 · 496 miles · a priest of the Diocese of Bridgeport
Markey walked the Francés at forty-one, on a five-week sabbatical marking the tenth anniversary of his ordination, without phone, television or internet. He kept the Roman collar on for the whole journey, a decision that shapes the book because it changed every conversation he had on the road. The account is short, built from his journal and the emails he sent home to his parish, and made of brief reflections rather than continuous narrative. That suits reading a few pages at a time in the weeks before departure. This is the second edition, with new stories and photographs added to the 2011 original.
Joyce Rupp — Walk in a Relaxed Manner: Life Lessons from the Camino
northern Spain, 2003 · 47 days, 450 miles · a Servite sister
Rupp walked at sixty, with a retired pastor, Fr Tom Pfeffer, for a companion, and organised the book around what the road taught rather than around the stages: twenty-five short chapters, each holding one lesson, with titles such as Travel Lightly and Savor Solitude. It is the most explicitly formational book on this list, a spiritual writer treating the Camino as a school, and it took first place in the Catholic Press Association awards the year after it appeared. Readers who want a day-by-day narrative should look elsewhere; readers who want the walk turned into something they can pray with will find it here.
Pilgrimage as discipline: accounts from other traditions
Catholic pilgrimage draws walkers from well beyond the Church, and three of the most thoughtful books about the Camino were written by ministers of other Christian traditions. They are named as such here rather than quietly mixed in with the rest.
Arthur Paul Boers — The Way Is Made by Walking: A Pilgrimage Along the Camino de Santiago
Camino Francés, 2005 · Mennonite minister and Benedictine oblate
Boers was teaching pastoral theology at a Mennonite seminary when he walked the five hundred miles in 2005. The book that followed is neither travelogue nor guide but an extended reflection on pilgrimage as a spiritual discipline, with a foreword by Eugene Peterson. His Benedictine formation shows throughout, and Catholic Books Review welcomed it as a rich mix of interpretation, social commentary and practical advice. It is the one title here that repays reading by someone who will never walk the route.
Kevin Wittmayer — 40 Days and Nights on the Camino de Santiago: A Pilgrimage for Finding Clarity, Renewal, and Healing
500 miles across northern Spain · an Episcopal priest · Church Publishing, 2026
The newest book on this list, and the most structured: Wittmayer blends each day's travel entry with Scripture and theological reflection, forty days in sequence, in a shape that lends itself to being read alongside a walk rather than before one. Pilgrims who want their reading to keep pace with their feet should consider carrying it.
Russ Eanes — The Walk of a Lifetime: 500 Miles on the Camino de Santiago
Camino Francés, 2018 · six weeks · walked at 61
Eanes had led the Mennonite Church's publishing agency for eleven years when he left it in early 2018 and, at sixty-one, set out alone from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port on a walk he had wanted to make for two decades. The book mixes history, spirituality, culture and a good deal of coffee, and is warmer and more companionable than most. It is a good choice for an older pilgrim wondering whether the thing is possible at sixty.
The walk itself
These seven are secular accounts. They carry no theological argument, and they are on this list because they are honest about what the road does to a body and a temperament — information a pilgrim needs and homilies rarely supply.
Hape Kerkeling — I'm Off Then: Losing and Finding Myself on the Camino de Santiago
Camino Francés, 2001 · translated from the German by Shelley Frisch
The best-selling Camino book ever written: a German comedian, unwell in body and spirit, walking from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago and writing it up with the wry humour that made him famous at home. It held first place on the Spiegel non-fiction list for more than a hundred weeks, has sold over three million copies in Germany alone, and has been translated into some eleven languages. It is also part of the reason so many European pilgrims are on the road at all: the year after it appeared, the number of German pilgrims arriving in Santiago rose by more than two thirds, a jump the German St James confraternity credited largely to the book. Read it for the honesty about how hard the walking is; do not look to it for doctrine.
Beth Jusino — Walking to the End of the World: A Thousand Miles on the Camino de Santiago
Le Puy-en-Velay to Finisterre · 1,000 miles, 79 days, 2015 · Mountaineers Books, 2018
Jusino and her husband walked out of the cathedral in Le Puy-en-Velay in April 2015 and crossed two countries and two mountain ranges to the Atlantic, roughly twice the distance most pilgrims cover. That makes this the book for anyone considering a full French start rather than Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. It won Mountaineers Books' Barbara Savage Memorial Award for adventure travel writing, and it is unvarnished about the physical cost.
Katharine B. Soper — Steps Out of Time: One Woman's Journey on the Camino
Camino Francés, solo, 2002 · walked at 57
A lawyer and professor of French walked the Francés alone at fifty-seven, newly diagnosed with osteoporosis and Sjögren's syndrome, and built the book from the journal she kept. It is as much about ageing and the pace of modern life as about Spain. Soper has since gone back six times to walk other routes, and has served as a volunteer hospitalière at the pilgrim welcome office in Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port and at the abbey in Conques; the book carries that weight of return.
Patrick Devaney — Two Million Steps: Band-Aids, Cocktails, and Finding Peace Along Spain's Camino de Santiago
Camino Francés · 500 miles, six weeks · published 2017
A former police officer's account of the Francés from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port, mixing the pilgrims met along the way — actors, journalists, a cellist — with humour, history and a frank thread about the depression he carried. The subtitle is accurate about the tone. Devaney has since walked four Caminos and more than two thousand miles, which is the usual sign that a first walk went well.
C.W. Lockhart — Blanket of Stars: Thru-Hiking the Camino de Santiago
Pamplona to Santiago · Camino Francés · published 2018
A university professor and veteran of two decades' military service walks the Francés while contending with agoraphobia, post-traumatic stress, chronic illness and an empty nest. This is the hardest book on the list and the most direct about grief. Pilgrims walking for reasons they would rather not explain to anyone will recognise it.
Angela Leslee — The Way of Love: On the Camino de Santiago
500 miles across Spain, 2016 · walked in her sixties
Leslee set out in 2016 and, contrary to her plans, ended up walking alone. She writes about humility, vulnerability and letting go of settled convictions, and speaks for a growing group on the road: women past sixty walking by themselves. The book is at its best on the practical fear of setting out solo in a foreign country.
John W. Pearson — The Way of the Wind: Embracing Life While Walking the Camino de Santiago
Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port to Santiago · Camino Francés, 2015
In 1996 a head-on collision killed Pearson's wife and left him learning to walk again. Nineteen years later, at fifty-four, he walked to Santiago. The book is a straightforward day-by-day travelogue, one chapter per day, written up from the family blog he kept on the road — the miles, the people, the meals, the beds. Its value lies in the plainness with which a man who nearly lost the use of his legs records covering five hundred miles on them.
Choosing one
For a Catholic pilgrim reading a single book before departure, take Codd. For one book to read on the road, take Rupp or Wittmayer, both built in short daily pieces. For a companion who is walking with you but not praying with you, Kerkeling travels best. And if the walk being considered starts in France rather than Spain, Jusino is the only account here that covers that ground.
Further Resources
- Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage guide — the cathedral, the Pilgrim Mass, the Compostela
- Camino Francés guide — the classic route, 780 km from Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port
- Camino de Santiago hub — every route, and the Holy Year 2027
- Spiritual preparation for the Camino — Confession, the Examen, and arriving at the tomb
- The Catholic pilgrim's packing list — what to carry, including what to read
