THE PILGRIM’S TABLE A Novel by Kevin Donahue · Book One of The Camino Chronicles

On a wind-shifted October evening in Muxía, Spain – the place medieval travelers called “the end of the world” – five strangers arrive at the gate of a small coastal inn called Chez Mer. Each has walked a different route along the Camino de Santiago. Each is carrying something they have not yet set down.

Claudia has walked 1,600 kilometers from Le Puy-en-Velay, leaving behind a twenty-three-year marriage that was slowly erasing her. Alex, eight months sober, is nursing the ankle that ended his two-hundred-kilometer walk. Dan and Jenny, married thirty-seven years, are on their fourth Camino and quietly negotiating what retirement looks like when the life you built no longer fits. Isabella has carried a stone from Seville for her brother Miguel, who planned this walk but did not live to take it.

Their host is Matthieu, a French chef who left a celebrated Geneva kitchen to feed pilgrims from his grandmother’s recipes. He has never walked the Camino himself, though a guidebook waits under his bed.

Over a single evening of extraordinary food, a building Atlantic storm, and the kind of honest conversation that only happens between strangers, these six discover that the stories they have been carrying alone are the ones that need to be told out loud.

This Book Is For You If:

• You’ve ever wondered if it is too late to change your life.
• You feel pulled to something more – but can’t quite name it.
• You crave genuine connections in an increasingly disconnected world.
• You’ve stood at a crossroads and chosen to keep going… or wish you had.
• You’ve poured yourself into caring for others and forgotten what fills you up.