Book Review: Tales from the Trail
Tales from the Trail: Keeping it Real on the Camino de Santiago: One African American Woman’s Quest for Clarity
by Jacquline (Jackie) L. Saxon
Palmetto Press, 2025
136 pages
on Goodreads
Reviewed by Meg Muthupandiyan | Elm Grove, WI
If you’re missing the humor-infused wisdom of pilgrim-people in your life, pick up Jackie Saxon’s Tales from the Trail. Seasoned pilgrims will feel the spirit of the pilgrim community come alive in the author’s hysterical meditations. Less seasoned pilgrims, curious about what lies ahead, will be laughing their way into new insights, too.
Rev. Jackie Saxon is the Executive Minister of the Mid-American Baptist Churches, but don’t let that fool you—there’s no solemnizing or sermonizing in this collection of short essays. From offering such memorable and practical tips as ‘just hit the highlights!’ when showering in albergues, to describing herself as someone who doesn’t just have issues but subscriptions, Jackie is an unapologetic humorist who seems utterly bemused to find herself a pilgrim. “You know you are a slow walker when… a three-year-old holding his father’s hand passes you on the Camino. Damn!!” she decries early, but slow walking didn’t stop her from going the distance as an American Pilgrims on the Camino leader.
In this volume, the 53 short meditations are largely thematically, rather than chronologically organized. Before departing on her 2017 pilgrimage, she confesses, “I was in love with the idea of walking northern Spain on foot. […] I admit that I overdosed.” Then she found herself with a 25-pound backpack on her back, trudging through something wonderful and weird, awkward, smelly, and really real. Jackie navigates loneliness and discouragement. She is confronted with her menstrual cycle and a sense of ick that only Mr. Clean could take the edge off. She tries to bite her tongue when asked for the umpteenth time, “Esta bien?” As she makes her slow way to Santiago, she offers up disenchantments that are in no way disenchanting. We aren’t laughing at her, we’re laughing beside her.
In the fabric of this collection, Jackie also threads views of the unique challenges she has faced as an African American woman walking the Camino. Early in the book, she expresses she doesn’t want her experience to be treated as being representative; it is, as she says, only hers. And yet the experiences she relays in “A Black Girl, Her Hair, and the Camino!”, “Older Spanish Men,” and “How Many Chips are in Your Camino Cookie,” will invite so many readers to interrogate the privileges afforded pilgrims of European heritage along our most beloved Way.
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