Ordinary Magic

Promises I Kept to My Mother Through Life, Illness, and a Very Long Walk on the Camino de Santiago

By: Cameron Powell

Narrated by: Cameron Powell

A terrifying diagnosis. An unbreakable bond. And two unforgettable journeys.

Cameron Powell has always struggled with goodbyes. On the day his marriage ends, he finds out his mother's cancer has returned, and this time, there may be no escape. Faced with the prospect of more chemo and surgery, his German-born mother, Inge, vows to conquer a 500-mile trek across Spain, and Cameron pushes aside his fears to walk by her side.

Joined by a misfit band of adventurers - a politically incorrect Spaniard, a theatrical Frenchwoman, a teenager who's never been far from home - Cameron and Inge write a fierce and funny travelogue about the rocky heights and hidden valleys of the Camino de Santiago. As a Camino memoir in the tradition of James Hitt or Bill Bryson, Ordinary Magic delivers.

But the hardest stretch comes three years later, when Inge's health declines, and Cameron, ready or not, must accept the challenge to remain as present to his mother as he can. Cameron begins to record, in still more chiseled prose, his real-time impressions of life's most difficult voyage. What he created has become one of literature's great love letters and a uniquely unflinching insight into how we all truly can create love and meaning in our lives, even amidst the fear and sadness we ll all face from time to time.

Propelled by the searing immediacy of Cameron's own fear and sadness, this deeply felt memoir opens up new insight into what it means to be a man, and takes us - with wisdom, humor, and an overflowing tenderness - into one of the most challenging journeys true friends can ever take.

If you like candid mother-son relationships, humorous tales from the trail, and in-the-moment insights on living a life of resilience and purpose, then you'll love Cameron Powell's luminous, inspirational true story about pilgrimage, presence, and letting go.

Ordinary Magic is the love story, lifelong inspiration, and soulful laugh and cry you need in your life right now. You can also join our community celebrating the ordinary magic of love and resilience, and wake up your love for yourself and others.

"Studded with gems of spirited observation and wit. Is this black humor? If so, it's of the most fond and loving sort, and Inge, Powell's mother, emerges as an indelible heroine. Powell is a writer to watch." (Mary Dearborn, Hemingway: A Biography)

"An epic love letter. Stunning, unique, unlike anything I've read before." (Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir)

Powerful, inspiring and, amazingly, almost impossible to put down. (Mary Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller

Author interview:

How did the story begin?

Mom and I blogged while on the Camino de Santiago. Readers loved the travel writing, and said our journey was inspiring and hilarious. But when the Camino ended, I stopped blogging. I started again when Mom's health began to decline because I just had to write. My decision to share my path with others, on the blog, was one of the best I've ever made. The love was overwhelming, a light in my darkness.

What surprised you most about readers reactions?

People saw the humor in it all. And they kept saying the posts were beautiful. I realized people have a real hunger for what really matters.

What makes this memoir different?

As a story of a mother through the eyes of her son, it's so rare as to be overdue. Readers have really responded to the sheer grit of my mom. And because I have a lifelong fascination with the human mind and heart, I saw a way to make my mom's psychological resilience something every reader can learn from.

©2011 Cameron Powell (P)2019 Cameron Powell

Achingly raw, precious story.

I loved reading and then listening to this incredible travelogue and life story about the kaleidoscope of feelings toward and about our mothers, from childhood recollections to the stunned realization of a final embrace. To reach late adulthood and still have a mother is of course a blessing. But we all have different memories of tender years and it can take a lifetime to fully understand the circumstances our mothers raised us, who they were before “us”, and why we feel the way we do about life and family.

I met Cameron at a legal conference, and happened to share his book with my own mother this summer while she visited me “the last time” from thousands of miles away. My mother and I are also immigrants - me double - and have both spent decades finding and making new friends as we bounced through different towns and countries. As an eager hiker, I was delighted by Cameron and Inge’s preparations for and travails on the Camino de Santiago. As someone with late diagnosed Asperger’s, who has also searched for meaning after divorce, mid-life career change and multiple relocations, I was heartened and inspired by Cameron’s candor and humor describing life’s ups, downs and plateaus.

We all have cause to reflect upon the weirdness of people and events as we go about our days, but it takes a talented writer to capture moments with such humor and precision that we gasp and guffaw from our quiet reading nook. There’s an abundance of sweet and silly vignettes throughout the book, but especially on the way to Santiago. I was tickled and touched by the challenges of resting through the “pre-dawn movement of the night’s orchestral maneuvers in the dark” and alternately evocative, elegant and quirky descriptions of the landscape, its sensory delights, and fellow travelers. A “particularly fine-looking cow, a dishwater blonde”; fennel fields so fragrant it was “like walking through a licorice factory”; and Rene the eagle, resting his bones “right next to the feng shuiist area.” I chuckled and smiled as I turned the pages, and again when I listed to the audiobook.

If Book I of Ordinary Magic was sweet, funny and fascinating, Book II, was a profound gift. As Cameron tended his mother through her final weeks, learning more than he expected about himself, his friends, and the meaning of love and life, he also guided his readers to contemplate their own family stories and place in the world: “We end, just as we burst from the womb, wrestling with our story.” Most of us have experienced time slowing down in a moment of paralyzing fear. But will be be able to hit pause on our busy lives when our loved one’s time comes, to extract and savor each feeling, moment, realization? I suspect many of us miss a lot, until the day it hits us: “Slow down. You may never cut a banana for her again. I slow down. Pay attention. I intend love into each cut, and love tumbles into the bowl.”

Ordinary Magic was the most meaningful book I’ve ever read about exploring and reclaiming your heritage, the many and various ways to love your mother, and the importance of good friends and shared adventures.

Beautiful story

I'll be walking El camino de Santiago in June and I thought the story was going to be only related to it; however, the story is a beautiful story of love and kindness. Thanks Inge for being an inspiration. I wish we would have crossed our caminos.

two great books in one

This is a well written and powerful memoir that allows the reader to not only travel with the author and his mom but to travel with the author as he sees his mother as a woman of strength and courage. For those who have lost a love one, this book will tug really hard at those places that haven't healed (or may never). For those you have fortunately been spared the inevitable heartache, this book will remind you to hug those close to you a little tighter. This book is really two great books in one with excellent passages and descriptive words about the trials and triumphs of walking the Camino. Take the time to read and explore this work..it will be time well spent.

Loved it!

One of the best “walking” stories!
Based on the walk, but lessons about love.
Share with all you love!

Magnificent

I have no words for the beauty displayed in this story! May Inge rest in peace.

wonderful story wonderful performance

I always enjoy when the author reads the book themselves. Ordinary Magic is next level. Cameron's impressions and struggles with the heavy emotional content while reading it adds so much to this story and experience.

A must read and recommend to friends and family.

Heartfelt gratitude to this most genuine account of love, loss, and the celebration of life. The authors deep connection and undying love towards his mother is reflected in this thoughtful account of being present throughout her chronic illness, the pains and frustrations of navigating the healthcare system, incorrect diagnoses, the ups and downs of failing health, and complete dedication to be present and fulfill her last wishes to include the profound and arduous, but spiritually charged hike on the Camino de Santiago from France to Spain.
As a fellow traveler on the Camino with my own son in '19 to grieve loss and strengthen resolve in grace, I understand its value and hope this book reaches many readers, who may decide to join the millions who have taken this amazing journey as well. The parallels to life the Camino provides are clear. Its joys, sorrows, challenges and victories, confusion and epiphanies witnessed and endured on the Camino are part of life's individual story. That the author so adeptly and often humorously reflected his experience with his mother and friends they met along the way made it simply hard to put down. His grasp of history only adds to the value of the Camino over the centuries. Finally, his presence during his mother's journey, critical conversations and recollections, and beliefs about the power and necessity of forgiveness and empathy are key messages to heal the human spirit and provide support to those in need as well as ourselves. In sum, a beautiful story about life, death, grieving, and moving forward. There is something for everyone in this book.

Just excellent !

What a happy ,sad, funny, snarky, irreverent , rude, gracious, sappy, bitter, spiteful, forgiving ,angry, Joyous book.
Read it you won't be sorry.

A Poignant, Funny, Uncommon Memoir

This wonderful book details the story of author Cameron Powell's developing relationship with his mother Inge during her very literal cancer journey--walking the Camino de Santiago in France and Spain--a chosen alternative therapy Inge nicknames and details in her blog, "Camino, Not Chemo!"

The author pieced together much of the story from his own blog, his mother's blog, and the handwritten journal of one of their traveling companions. He masterfully interweaves these to create a cohesive and fluid narrative at turns poignant and humorous, while conveying a strong sense of what it is like to complete a pilgrimage, from the camaraderie and community to the blisters, injuries, and bouts of illness and fatigue. Powell's offbeat sense of humor, coupled with his delivery in this Audible version--which includes acting out the voices of his traveling companions--is so funny it often made me laugh out loud.

The author's descriptions of the painful moments that make up his mother's dying weeks are unflinching, honest, and deeply vulnerable. I loved getting to know Inge and Cameron in all of their flawed humanness. Having lost my own mother three years ago, I resonated with their complex and often fraught relationship and was moved to witness the tenderness that grew between them on the Camino and in the weeks before her passing. I noted many parallels between Inge's decline and my own mother's that are probably somewhat universal and found myself nodding, welling up, and even chuckling in recognition as I listened.

I was originally attracted to this book because I wanted to vicariously experience the Camino, but it was the story of the mother-son relationship that grabbed a hold of me. Through his writing and his voice, Cameron Powell conveys the depth of feeling and humanity in himself, Inge, and everyone who knew and loved her. Listening to this book became a part of my daily routine. Now that it's done, I miss it, and the complex feelings it evoked in me linger.

Riveting, gut wrenching, awe inspiring...

This is not your standard travelogue. It is not your standard tale. It is an intimate window into the deepest depths of pain and the highest peaks of adventure.

Recommended for anybody considering hiking the El Camino, anybody who has dealt with or is dealing with cancer… And anybody wanting to savor every last moment of their life. This book encouraged me to start doing that right now!