An adventure story that is tinged with hope, determination and sadness. Clare, a high school American science teacher from Minnesota, is an accomplished bicyclist, hiker and has a passion for bees. She sets off on a ride through parts of the US and Canada in preparation for a lone hiking trip through southern France to the western tip of Spain along the world renowned Camino de Comp Estela. She takes with her a symbolic hunting knife which was passed through the generations by her French great grandmother who found it under the bed of a World War One soldier from a Minnesota regiment she was caring for in hospital and who later died. The knife provides further significance when Clare meets an old French couple. Along the trail she has interesting and varied conversations with among others, a dubious bishop begging for money and a so-called healer. The story however ends in tragedy . . .