Everything Changes Everything - by Lauren Kessler (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

A resonant and timely story about love, loss, and forging a path forward in the aftermath of grief

"It is solved by walking," goes the oft-quoted wisdom attributed to Saint Augustine. Lauren Kessler, an unflinching immersion journalist, is not a religious person. But after tragedy shattered the contours of her life, she needed to move--to do something, to be somewhere else. So she set out alone on the famed Camino de Santiago, walking across Spain to create space between the life she'd lived and the life she hadn't chosen but now inhabited.

Everything Changes Everything is a story about facing what we'd rather avoid, about the wounds we carry, hide, and--sometimes--heal. It's about the privilege of choosing hardship, the grace of temporary friendship, the solace of kindred spirits, and the power of movement to unstick what's stuck. It's also about unfounded optimism, unlikely laughter, and the way grief and beauty can coexist in a single step.

Both raw and luminous, Everything Changes Everything is a meditation on what it means to keep walking when the ground gives way beneath us.

About the Author

Lauren Kessler is an award-winning author and (semi) fearless immersion reporter who combines lively narrative with deep research. She is the author of 11 works of narrative nonfiction, 3 biographies, an oral history, and 4 books on writing and reporting. She teaches Storytelling for Social Change at the University of Washington and runs writing workshops for Forum for Journalism and Media in Vienna, and for newbie and veteran writers closer to home. A graduate of Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University, she holds a Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Washington. She lives in Oregon.