Two Steps Forward: a story of second chances

by Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist

*THE INTERNATIONAL BESTSELLER*

'Charming and absorbing' Daily Mail 'Sleepless in Seattle meets Wild . . . A beautifully crafted tale of love, self-acceptance, and blisters' Sunday Express

A smart, funny novel of second chances and reinvention from the author of The Rosie Result - two misfits walk 2,000 km along the Camino to find themselves and, perhaps, each other.

Zoe, a sometime artist, is from California. Martin, an engineer, is from Yorkshire. Both have ended up in picturesque Cluny, in central France. Both are struggling to come to terms with their recent past - for Zoe, the death of her husband; for Martin, a messy divorce.

Looking to make a new start, each sets out alone to walk two thousand kilometres from Cluny to Santiago de Compostela, in northwestern Spain, in the footsteps of pilgrims who have walked the Camino (the Way) for centuries. The Camino changes you, it's said. It's a chance to find a new version of yourself, and a new beginning. But can these two very different people find themselves? Will they find each other?

In this smart, funny and romantic journey, Martin's and Zoe's stories are told in alternating chapters by husband-and-wife team Graeme Simsion and Anne Buist. Two Steps Forward is a novel about renewal - physical, psychological and spiritual. It's about the challenge of walking a long distance and of working out where you are going. And it's about what you decide to keep, what you choose to leave behind and what you rediscover along the way.

Optioned for film by Ellen deGeneres.

• ISBN10: 1473675405
• ISBN13: 9781473675407
• Publish Date: 5 April 2018
• Publish Status: Out of Print
• Out of Print: 29 March 2021
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: John Murray Press
• Imprint: Two Roads
• Format: Hardcover
• Pages: 368
• Language: English

Reviews

[Joséphine]

Actual rating: 4.5 stars

Initial thoughts: Took me over two months to read Two Steps Forward. Usually taking so long to read a book means I had to drag myself through it but in this case, it meant quite the opposite: I loved this book so much! Admittedly, it was really slow at first, and bogged down with the most minute details but it did pick up. Besides, given the long and arduous journeys this book followed on El Camino de Santiago, it's only fitting that I spent so much time with the book myself. They say the pilgrimage changes you, and that impact extended to me as the reader as well.