Book Review: The Camigas Scarf
The Camigas Scarf: Mother (Book One)
by Alder Allensworth
The Alder Tree, 2024
254 pages
on Goodreads
Reviewed by Amy Horton | Warrenton, MO
The Camigas Scarf is a novel inspired by an actual scarf.
The actual scarf once belonged to a young American au pair working in Spain. By happenstance, the au pair met Gigi, a pilgrim on the Camino de Santiago. So delighted to connect with a fellow English speaker, the young woman lost track of time and missed her bus. Gigi found her a safe place to stay for the night, and upon waking the next morning discovered the young woman had left behind her scarf. Hoping she might one day reunite the woman with her scarf, Gigi carried the scarf for the remainder of her Camino and back home. Seven years later, when Gigi mentored Allensworth as she prepared for her own Camino, Gigi presented Allensworth with the scarf, convinced it needed to return to the ancient pilgrim route. Since then, through the private Facebook group Camigas—portmanteau of “Camino” and “amigas” and a community of women who support women on the Camino de Santiago—the scarf has been passed from one woman to another, accompanying them on their pilgrimage journeys.
Years later, when Allensworth attended a writer’s retreat in Spain, The Camigas Scarf began to take shape not as one story, but—in a nod to the sacred feminine Triple Goddess—as a trilogy following the journeys of three women: a mother, a maiden, and a crone. The Camigas Scarf: Mother (Book One), follows the journey of Helen, a forty-something Floridian, former nurse, homemaker, and near-empty nester on pilgrimage with daughter Hannah, who just graduated high school. They are accompanied along the Camino Francés by Missourian Camille, Pacific Northwesterner Emily, Texan Jackie, Scandinavian Aino, and Catholic nun Sister Sophia.
While The Camigas Scarf unfurls with beach-read ease, it still manages to balance some weighty questions as Helen and her walking companions explore and wrestle with their beliefs about religion, womanhood, and personal identity.
At the end of her walking journey, Helen realizes: “I am enough, I am a mother, a lover, a wife, a nurse, a friend. There is room for all.” What an unburdening for a weary soul! And yet, she also recognizes that in returning home she has more introspective work to do: “I had to go home and see what I needed to hold onto and what I needed to release.”
One thing Helen is sure to release is the scarf. Allensworth tells her readers they can anticipate the 2025 arrival of Book Two, when Helen passes the scarf to Valerie for a maiden’s journey along the Camino del Norte and Camino Primitivo routes. In Book Three (release to be announced), the scarf finds its way to Dorothy for a crone’s journey on the Camino Portugués.
