Call of the Camino (2025) is a dual-timeline women’s fiction novel by Suzanne Redfearn, the bestselling author of In an Instant (2020) and Where Butterflies Wander (2024), among other works. The novel alternates between 1997 and 2024 along the Camino de Santiago, the Christian pilgrimage route across northern Spain. In 1997, 17-year-old Isabelle Vidal flees her Andorran boarding school after a deadly family feud threatens her life, finding refuge among the pilgrims of the Camino. In 2024, Reina Watkins, a New York copy editor, seizes an unexpected opportunity to walk the same trail, carrying her late father’s journal and backpack as she traces the footsteps of the parents she barely knew. The novel is grounded in two real historical contexts: the modern resurgence of the Camino, which saw pilgrim numbers rise dramatically in the late 20th century, and a real multi-generational land dispute in the remote Pyrenean village of Tor, Spain, in which competing claims over communal mountain land escalated into violence and murder in the 1990s. Through the fictional stories of Isabelle and Reina, the novel explores Physical Endurance as a Path to Healing, Secrecy as an Act of Protection, and The Intimacy of Shared Struggle.

This guide is based on the 2025 Lake Union Publishing paperback edition of the novel.

Content Warning: The source material and this guide feature depictions of sexual violence, sexual harassment, physical abuse, illness, death, graphic violence, substance use, addiction, pregnancy loss, cursing, and animal death.

Plot Summary

In 1997, Isabelle “Izzy” Vidal is a 17-year-old student at a boarding school in Pau, France, when her younger brother, Xavier, arrives with dire news. Two brothers from the rival Sansas family in their remote Andorran village of Dur have died in a car crash. Their deaths break a tie in an important vote over the future of a mountain, putting Isabelle’s deciding vote in play and shifting power to her ruthless father. Convinced her father is responsible for the crash, Senor Sansas is on his way to Pau to kill Isabelle for revenge. To protect her siblings, Isabelle realizes her only option is to vanish, thereby keeping the vote deadlocked. She flees into the wilderness, heading for the Camino de Santiago, a 500-mile pilgrimage trail across Spain.

Twenty-seven years later, in 2024, Reina Watkins is a copy editor at New York’s Journey magazine. When her ambitious rival, Matt Calhoun, is assigned the lead story for a revamped issue featuring the Camino, Reina is disheartened. The Camino holds deep personal significance; her father, Peter, who died in a plane crash when she was eight, walked it before she was born. When Matt is mugged and loses his passport days before his flight, Reina seizes the opportunity, emailing her boss Brenda Scythe and volunteering to take his place. Brenda agrees, and as Reina prepares, she discovers her father’s old backpack containing his 1997 Camino journal. She resolves to walk the trail in his footsteps, reading his journal day by day to experience the journey with him.

Isabelle, adopting the name “Joan” to protect her identity, begins her pilgrimage in St. Jean Pied de Port. She befriends fellow walkers Jen, Joe, and Erika, and though she is a natural in the mountains, her cheap sneakers quickly fall apart.

Meanwhile, Reina begins her journey, but is physically unprepared for the grueling ascent of the Pyrenees, and her Doc Martens cause painful blisters. She finds companionship with Ted and Ned, a pair of warmhearted Canadian brothers who become her trail family. Her trek is complicated when Matt, having secured an emergency passport, catches up to her in Puente la Reina. He taunts her and declares their assignment a competition for the feature story.

In the same town in the past, Isabelle encounters two American brothers, Peter and David Watkins. Peter, who is Reina’s father, is immediately captivated by Isabelle. He notices her limp, tends to her raw toe with supplies from his first-aid kit, and gives her his own sandals. Smitten, Peter secretly backtracks 24 kilometers to Pamplona to buy Isabelle a proper pair of hiking boots, rejoining her on the trail and cementing a bond between them.

As their respective journeys continue, Isabelle and Peter become inseparable, their romance blossoming. In Logroño, Isabelle’s lack of money leads her to offer to clean the albergue, where the lecherous hosteler assaults her. Peter rushes in to save her, breaking his arm in the ensuing struggle. Terrified the police will discover her identity, Isabelle confesses her real name and her entire story to Peter. He refuses to leave her side, and they flee together, creating a plan to co-author a guidebook called Wisdom of the Way as a legitimate way for him to support her.

In the 2024 timeline, Reina’s rivalry with Matt intensifies. In Logroño, he sabotages her by hiding the Wi-Fi password, causing her to miss a deadline. Reina retaliates by secretly filling his pack’s rain-cover pouch with rocks. A few days later, Ted nearly drowns in a river, and Matt heroically saves him, but his new phone is destroyed in the process. This forces a reluctant collaboration, as they must now share Reina’s phone to send their daily updates to the magazine. In León, Reina’s boyfriend, John, surprises her for her birthday and proposes; reeling from the grand gesture, she accepts. The next day, she makes a shocking discovery: Her long-lost Uncle David is alive and living as a hermit on the trail, running a donation-based rest stop called Sanctuary of the Gods.

Uncle David joins Reina’s walking group and slowly reveals the full truth of her mother’s past. Isabelle was from Dur, Andorra, and her flight was a desperate attempt to escape the violent family feud over her vote. Her father, Peter, had protected Reina from this dangerous legacy her entire life, even pretending Isabelle was Portuguese. David also delivers the heartbreaking news that Isabelle was pregnant with Reina’s brother when she died of a pulmonary embolism.

In the 1997 timeline, Isabelle’s father and brother track her down in León. Her father, now a terrified pawn of the powerful developers he partnered with, demands she return home. Peter tries to intervene, but Isabelle warns him away, and in a moment of chaos, she flees again, abandoning her pack and a heartbroken Peter. She soon falls gravely ill with pneumonia.

In 2024, as Reina approaches O Cebreiro, she leaves the trail to find a hidden hermitage her father wrote about. There, she is stung by a bee and suffers a life-threatening allergic reaction. Matt, worried by her absence, consults her father’s journal to deduce her location. He finds her just in time, saving her life and sheltering with her through a cold, rainy night in the hermitage. They forge an unexpected and deep connection.

Shaken by her near-death experience, Reina calls John and breaks off their engagement. Their fragile truce shattered, Matt catches Reina looking at his private journal the night before they reach Santiago, and, believing she is trying to steal his work, he furiously cuts her off.

In the past, Isabelle is taken to a hospital in Porto, Portugal, by her friend Gemma. She recovers from pneumonia but misses her planned rendezvous with Peter at the end of the world in Finisterre. Realizing she cannot condemn him to a life on the run, she makes a deal with Senor Sansas, promising to never cast her vote in exchange for her family’s safety—a deal that implicitly sacrifices her own father. A year later, working in a café and engaged to a local stonemason named Alberto, Isabelle is stunned when Peter appears; he had never stopped searching for her.

Reina and her trail family reach Santiago de Compostela. On her final night, she reads Matt’s finished article and is humbled by its brilliance. She also has an epiphany, realizing Matt never stole a story from their former colleague Karen; he had been secretly ghostwriting for her to protect her job when her health was failing. Filled with remorse, Reina emails Brenda, conceding the feature story to Matt, praising his work, and resigning from the magazine. She explains her plan to finish the Wisdom of the Way guidebook using her family’s notes. She also copies Matt on the email.

Reina then travels to her newly discovered ancestral home in Dur, Andorra, a now-thriving village where she is welcomed by her grandmother, her Aunt Ana, and her Uncle Xavier. One evening in the family tavern, Matt appears. He shows her a prepress copy of the Journey issue, which now bears a shared byline for both of them. He admits his feelings for her, then kisses her as her newfound family cheers them on.