Spotlight & Giveaway: Call of the Camino by Suzanne Redfearn

Today it is my pleasure to Welcome author Suzanne Redfearn to HJ!

Hi Suzanne and welcome to HJ! We’re so excited to chat with you about your new release, Call of the Camino!

 
Dear reader,
 

Please summarize the book for the readers here:

My latest novel, Call of the Camino, was inspired by my own experience of walking the Camino de Santiago, a five-hundred-mile trek across Spain and the people I met along the way. It is the story of two women taking the extraordinary transformative journey a generation apart. One is seeking to find a future and the other is walking it to discover her past.
 

Please share your favorite line(s) or quote from this book:

Every morning we are born again, and it’s what we do today that matters most.

All the roads in life, one way or another, lead you to what was predetermined—a purpose, a thing, a someone.

There’s no right path; there’s only the path you’re on and the single step in front of you.

The Camino has absorbed many tears, and it is a keeper of secrets.

The purpose of a pilgrimage is to allow time and space away from the familiar, so old ideas and beliefs can fall away and new higher perspectives can arise, and the profoundness of the effect varies.

Please share a few Fun facts about this book…

For twenty-three days of the Camino, whenever one of my fellow pilgrims asked if I was going to write a novel based on my experience, I told them absolutely not. While transformative, the trek is extraordinarily monotonous. You walk, you eat, you sleep, you wake up and do it again. Once in a while, you do laundry in the sink. And then, on day twenty-three, all that changed. The legend says, “The Camino provides,” and two-thirds of the way into my journey, the writing gods smiled down and put the inspiration for this remarkable story in my path.

What first attracts your Hero to the Heroine and vice versa?

There are two love stories in the novel. The first heroine was drawn to her love interest by his heroic act of hiking nearly thirty miles in a day to buy her a pair of hiking shoes to replace the sneakers she was wearing that were coming apart and tearing apart her feet. The second heroine starts off in competition with the man she eventually falls for, and only realizes the true depth of his character after it’s too late and it seems all hope is lost.

Did any scene have you blushing, crying or laughing while writing it? And Why?

I love this scene because it is the first time Isabelle and Peter declare their love:

It is the most beautiful cathedral I’ve ever seen, the nave a hundred feet tall and surrounded with stained glass. My soul swells as we listen to the choir of singers echoing off the hallowed stone. Peter sits beside me, our hands entwined, and while he doesn’t understand the words, I know he is moved as well, his eyes fixed on the altar as the voices swell and recede around us.

After so many days of walking in the quiet of the Meseta, the noisy bustle of León was a shock to the system. Last night was particularly rough. It was the first night Peter and I spent apart since Logroño. The León albergue is part of a convent run by nuns, and the men and women sleep in separate dorms.

In the Meseta, the five of us—me, Peter, Jen, David, and Joe—slept most nights beneath the magnificent stars, forgoing shelter altogether. And last night, I missed Peter so much I ached. Constantly I need to remind myself we’ve only been together thirteen days. Time a trick in the Meseta, each day is like a month when all you have are your thoughts and the people beside you, and already, Peter is so much a part of me it’s hard to recall my life before him.

The singing stops, and with a deep, satisfied sigh, Peter turns and smiles at me, then he pulls out his journal and jots down a note before standing and pulling me to my feet. It has been a glorious day of rest, the two of us free to explore the city with no destination except where our whimsy takes us.

We walk into the square, and my heart leaps when I see the traditionally dressed dancers putting on a performance. Recognizing the jota folk dance, I pull my hand from Peter’s and join the back of the line. I stomp and twirl and clap as Peter watches with a wide grin. I play up my swishing and kicks, and when the song ends, twirl my way toward him.

He catches my hand, pirouettes me around, and says, “God, I love you.” Then, realizing what he said, his eyes go wide for a second before his brows lift, and he says it again, “I love you. I love you, I love you, I love you.”

I lift up on my toes and kiss him, and he pulls me tight, his cast pressed into the small of my back. “Jo també t’estimo,” I mumble against his lips. I love you too.

He releases me, and hand in hand, we sit on a bench to watch a while longer, our secret between us. I clap and sing along, and Peter writes more notes in his journal.

Readers should read this book….

This book is for anyone who understands the power of wandering. It will take you on a remarkable journey of five-hundred miles through two women’s eyes and allow you, from the comfort of your couch, to experience the Camino de Santiago, the transformative trek millions have taken over millennia.

What are you currently working on? What other releases do you have in the works?

My next novel is in with my editor (title TBD), and as always I am pecking away at the keys on something new.
 

Thanks for blogging at HJ!

Giveaway: A print copy of CALL OF THE CAMINO by Suzanne Redfearn

To enter Giveaway, please share this post and leave a comment to this Q Have you ever heard of the Camino de Santiago? Do you think you might want to experience it?

This giveaway closes 3 days from the date of this post.

Excerpt from Call of the Camino:

“Are you kidding?” Erika exclaims almost angrily before plopping to the ground beside the post and dropping her face to her hands like a petulant child.

She reminds me a little of Gemma, though she’s at least fifteen years older and far less curvy. But both possess ageless cuteness, which is somehow both bratty and endearing at once.

“Is math different in Spain?” Joe asks, looking at the offending distance marker.

The yellow arrow points down the trail, and the number reads, “4,1 km,” which is point one kilometer more than the last distance marker we passed some time ago.

Jen sloughs off her pack, sits on it, then stretches out her left leg. Her knee started bothering her halfway up the trail, and I can see it’s swollen.

Erika mutters unintelligibly into her hands, while Joe sits against the post with his feet stuck out in front of him and his eyes closed. His feet are enormous in proportion to his body, especially considering how skinny he is. Everything about him is lanky, loping, and wonderful.

“The good news is there’s no more uphill,” Dan says.

Dan and Emily, a father–daughter duo, joined us when we stopped to rest near a small Mother Mary statue a few meters off the trail.

“And the bad news?” Erika mumbles into her palms.

“Downhill is harder than up.”

This is Dan’s fourth Camino. Emily is getting married at the end of summer, and she wanted one last “hoorah” with her “Pops” before she walks down the aisle. I needed to ask the meaning of “hoorah,” and when she told me, I found it fitting for a girl so bright. Because of Dan’s extensive Camino experience, he is a fount of knowledge, and it’s been wonderful having him along. Had he not been with us, I might not have realized I had crossed into Spain. The cattle grate that marks the border was completely unremarkable and easy to miss.

“Welcome to Spain,” he said, when he and I, the fastest of the group, walked through the opening in the fence.

I stopped and craned my head back. “Really?” I said.

“Really.” He nodded in front of us. “Spain.” Then nodded behind us. “France.”

I was so excited by the idea I returned to hop back and forth several times. Spain. France. Spain. France. Just like that, I’d left France behind and had entered another country altogether.
He and I sat down “in Spain” to wait for the others. Dan generously shared his dried apricots and peanuts, and I added him to the list of people I would thank at the end of the journey, a Camino tradition.

The others finally caught up, and they looked so exhausted it made me wonder why they were doing this when it seemed to make them so miserable. There’s not a person from Dur who would even consider walking eight hundred kilometers across a country for no reason. And they certainly wouldn’t spend money or take time off work for such a thing.

I thought about home a lot today. It was impossible not to when so much of the walk reminded me of Dur—the mountains, flowers, wild horses, and black-faced sheep. I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around the idea of never returning. When I fled, my only thought had been on protecting Xavier and Ana, but today, with endless hours of walking through this strangely familiar world, there was time to consider the rest of it—my ma, cousins, friends, Gemma—and the idea of never seeing any of them ever again is horribly distressing.

Innately, Dan seemed to understand, and he walked silently beside me as we forged ahead of the others, not pressing me, even when I cried.

“The Camino has absorbed many tears,” he said at one point. “And it is a keeper of secrets.”

It was the perfect thing to say, and I loved him for it. He wears a large silver cross around his neck and returns to the Camino whenever he feels his faith waning. He says the walk is restorative and his way of reconnecting with Jesus. I hope he’s right. I could use a dose of renewed faith at the moment.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
 
 

Book Info:

From the bestselling author of In an Instant comes a deeply moving novel following the transformative journeys of two women walking entwined paths on a legendary route across Europe a generation apart.

Reina Watkins lost her father when she was eight. Seventeen years later, she still carries that grief. When her budding journalism career takes an unexpected turn, it leads her to the ancient five-hundred-mile Camino de Santiago in Spain. Now she finds herself embarking on the same pilgrimage that her father made at her age, unaware of how profoundly it will change her.

Back in 1997, Isabelle Vidal is a teenager on the run. Fleeing from her boarding school, she heads straight for the Way of Saint James. She’s heard the Camino will provide. And so it does, in the form of a handsome young American and the promise of a new life. But it could all fall apart if her troubles catch up with her.

One woman is coming to grips with her past; the other is grasping for her future. But as each treads the same hallowed trail, it will knot their destinies together in a most miraculous way.
Book Links:  Amazon | B&N
 
 

Meet the Author:

Suzanne Redfearn is the award-winning and bestselling author of eight novels (one under the name S.E. Redfearn). Her newest novel, CALL OF THE CAMINO, is a deeply moving novel following the transformative journeys of two women walking entwined paths on a legendary route across Europe a generation apart.

IN AN INSTANT published in 2020 was an Amazon #1 bestseller as well as a Goodreads Choice Awards Finalist. It was named Best New Fiction from Best Book Awards and has been translated into twenty-four different languages.

Her work has also been recognized by RT Reviews, Target Recommends, Publisher’s Marketplace, and Kirkus Reviews.

A former architect, Suzanne lives in Laguna Beach, California, where she and her husband own Lumberyard Restaurant.
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