His tales of the Camino de Santiago in this new book are a sort of mixture of the Canterbury Tales and the Decameron, out of which he has created a tapestry of new images. Not that his book is structured in the same manner as the latter, nor are Ward's tales of his fellow pilgrims the lusty kind that stood out among Giovanni Boccaccio's 100 tales written around 1350. Or, on second thought, there is lust in the way the pilgrims he encounters seem to approach the ‘conquering’ of the trail, but it has nothing to do with sex. Neither does Ward's book contain the poetic lines Geoffrey Chaucer created in the Canterbury Tales, most likely inspired by the Decameron, and who is believed to have been a fellow traveler along the Camino. Chaucer began to write his Canterbury Tales around 1380. Yet, at the end of All the Good Pilgrims, there is a sense of poetry, of stories told by one individual about many others, who in turn tell his story back to us, perhaps without the author's realization.

Ward's pilgrims are not fleeing the Black Death either, as they did in the Decameron, yet one can't help but wonder what it is that brings them to walk at least 780 km to reach a place in northern Spain where it is said St. James lies buried. Like Ward, many claim no religious reasons for their arduous journey. Some of them can't resist to walk even a little further, beyond Santiago de Compostela, to Finisterre. Ever since pilgrims began their journey along this route about 1,000 years ago, they believed that Finisterre represented the outermost region of Earth. Hence the name, finis terre (Latin: terra/earth).

Traditionally, the Camino starts in the Pyrenean town of Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port (literally meaning Saint John at the foot of the mountain pass in French) in France where soon after it crosses into Spain. Many pilgrims began, or still begin, their walk from other directions. Ward, however, is among the traditionalists. He has walked the Camino (or part of it) a total of five times—so far! He mostly started his journey in St. Jean, across the Pyrenees, to Roncesvalles just across the border, where it is customary to picks up a Pilgrim Passport. It is stamped along the way to prove that the passport holders have actually walked the route.

When these peregrinos reach their final goal, they are given their compostela, their pilgrim star, provided they haven't cheated and arrived by other means than by foot, or totally avoided the plain, dormitory-style hostels (refugios) provided for pilgrims along the route. Good pilgrims do not stay in comfortable hotels, though now and then they can't resist a private room, and they do not travel by automated means.

Compostela, in case you wonder, is a corruption of Campus Stellae (Field of Stars) because according to legend the relics are said to have been discovered in 835 by Theodomir, bishop of Iria Flavia in the far northwest of the principality of Asturia. A star guided Theodomir to the spot. Hence, it is believed that 'Compostela' has as its etymology a corruption of 'Campus Stellae' (Field of Stars).

This historic-legendary element, however, is not part of Ward's delightful All Good Pilgrims. Unusual characters are, as are his vivid descriptions of various sections of the trail, the countryside around it, the villages that nestle along its path—some barely hovels of despair, others recovering from past neglect because by 2004 the number of pilgrims along the trail each year had grown from around 50,000 in the 1980s to close to 100,000.

These pilgrims are usually not rich, but they have enough money to leave behind in local taverns, restaurants and stores to boost the economy there. This has led to a revival of the fairly poor northern regions of Spain, especially Galicia, where the native tongue is closely related to Portuguese. But first the pilgrims must travel through the equally poor sections of northern Castile and Leon, after first traversing through the Basque region of Navarre, which includes the famous town of Pamplona.

In All the Good Pilgrims, Ward's journey begins on a September day with a bus ride to Saint-Jean-Pied-de-Port. There he and four others are dropped off at the Gate of St. James (or Jodoni Jakue Atea in Basque) because no cars are allowed into the town where its narrow cobble-stoned main street forms the medieval sirga (another word for camino, which means road or trail) that started off the pilgrim road in ancient history. Just as the five men are about to enter through the gate, Luis, one of two Brazilians in this little group, calls out, "Whoa!" He wants his fellow travelers to think about what they are about to do. "These are your first steps on the Camino de Santiago."

Ward writes, 'Luis is right to alert us to this moment. While we've all heard it said that life is a pilgrimage, it is also true that a pilgrimage is a life.' He continues, 'From this moment, we are part of a new family, a family of the road on its way to Santiago. In a few weeks, when we reach the gates of the holy city, we will die a little death and catch a glimpse of the life to come—or so is the traditional way of thinking. So the steps we are about to take through the Gate of St. James are our pilgrim baby steps, the first of a life-within-a-life. Let's show them some regard.'

Of course, Ward is no novice at this and when they arrive at the Association de Amis du Chemin de Saint Jacques, he meets his first familiar face, an elderly volunteer hospitalero, and as they shake hands, he thinks of what a Spanish pilgrim in a wheelchair called the hospitalero the year before, " . . . a French son of a whore." With this Ward takes us into his adventures along the Camino with both philosophical insights and a fine sense of humor. Among other things he is surprised to hear a young Australian tell him that when he first laid eyes on Ward, carrying his walking stick, backpack and wearing his hat, he knew that this pilgrimage was not a dream. 'Aaron had taken me by surprise. I see myself as a collector of the stories of others; it seldom occurs to me that I am a character in theirs.' That is something to think about. Are we not all a character in someone else's story?

Interestingly, as one reads the book, one also discovers that Ward is a surprising puritan when it comes to the Camino. While he doesn't mind two German girls singing Swedish songs along the trail, he disapproves of the CDs being listened to by two English women, whom the Germans call, in my humble view, rather cattily, "The Spice pilgrims". There is something puritanical about that statement as well.

'As a pilgrim, you came to listen to the Camino, you didn't bring the noise of the world with you. But the Camino has tempered my judgements. Or maybe I'm just willing to let those two girls get away with anything,' Ward admits

As the author weaves his story, he meets people, loses them, and then finds them again. One of these is Monsieur Rickman, who had told him somewhere along the trail, "We walk until we meet ourselves. Then we see that the rest was all illusion." Ward remembers these words as he says goodbye to Rickman sitting near the lighthouse at Finisterre, overlooking the sea. Sitting there, another peregrina, Montse, comes toward him. 'Her hazel staff was in her hand. She sat down with me, and we laughed one more time about the tick, and the journey, and the people we had known . . . We were two strangers who had shared the road and that was enough.' Ward had first met her in Roncesvalles, and ' . . . here she was in this last place, an orange cotton thread binding beginning to end as tightly as they would ever be bound.'

Montse shouts "Gracias" into the wind and throws her staff into the void. Ward joins her in the shouting. 'There we stood, hoarse and smiling, high above the glittering ocean, and I thought, if the road must end, let it end in the word. Gracias.'

Gracias, indeed. Ward's journey is made so inviting, it is tempting to repeat it oneself. Of course, I won't. I have other pilgrimages in mind, and they do not lead through Europe. But this book is one of those treasures that inspires one to think of where our own roads may lead us.