The Camino ─ A Journey of the Spirit

It has been nearly three decades since Shirley MacLaine commenced her brave and public commitment to chronicling her personal quest for spiritual understanding. In testament to the endurance and vitality of her message, each of her eight legendary bestsellers -- from Don't Fall Off the Mountain to My Lucky Stars -- continues today to attract, dazzle, and transform countless new readers. Now Shirley is back -- with her most breathtakingly powerful and unique book yet.

This is the story of a journey. It is the eagerly anticipated and altogether startling culmination of Shirley MacLaine's extraordinary -- and ultimately rewarding -- road through life. The riveting odyssey began with a pair of anonymous handwritten letters imploring Shirley to make a difficult pilgrimage along the Santiago de Compostela Camino in Spain. Throughout history, countless illustrious pilgrims from all over Europe have taken up the trail. It is an ancient -- and allegedly enchanted -- pilgrimage. People from St. Francis of Assisi and Charlemagne to Ferdinand and Isabella to Dante and Chaucer have taken the journey, which comprises a nearly 500-mile trek across highways, mountains and valleys, cities and towns, and fields. Now it would be Shirley's turn.

For Shirley, the Camino was both an intense spiritual and physical challenge. A woman in her sixth decade completing such a grueling trip on foot in thirty days at twenty miles per day was nothing short of remarkable. But even more astounding was the route she took spiritually: back thousands of years, through past lives to the very origin of the universe. Immensely gifted with intelligence, curiosity, warmth, and a profound openness to people and places outside her own experience, Shirley MacLaine is truly an American treasure. And once again, she brings her inimitable qualities of mind and heart to her writing. Balancing and negotiating the revelations inspired by the mysterious energy of the Camino, she endured her exhausting journey to Compostela until it gradually gave way to a far more universal voyage: that of the soul. Through a range of astonishing and liberating visions and revelations, Shirley saw into the meaning of the cosmos, including the secrets of the ancient civilizations of Atlantis and Lemuria, insights into human genesis, the essence of gender and sexuality, and the true path to higher love.

With rich insight, humility, and her trademark grace, Shirley MacLaine gently leads us on a sacred adventure toward an inexpressibly transcendent climax. The Camino promises readers the journey of a thousand lifetimes.

Shirley MacLaine, OscarR-, three-time EmmyR-, and ten-time Golden Globe?-winning actress, has appeared in more than fifty films, been nominated for an Academy Award six times, and received the Oscar for Best Actress in 1984. Most recently, Shirley was honored with the 1999 Golden Bear Award for lifetime achievement at the Berlin International Film Festival and the 1998 Cecil B. DeMille Award for outstanding contribution to the entertainment field. She has also won two British Academy awards, two German Silver Bear and Golden Camera awards, two Volpi Cup awards at the Venice Film Festival, two Donatello awards in Italy, and New York Film Critics and Los Angeles Film Critics awards. A longtime outspoken advocate for civil rights and liberties, Shirley is the author of eight international bestsellers -- Don't Fall Off the Mountain, You Can Get There from Here, Out on a Limb, Dancing in the Light, It's All in the Playing, Going Within, Dance While You Can, and My Lucky Stars. And in her latest film, Bruno, she costars and makes her directorial debut. She lives in Malibu, California, and Abiquiu, New Mexico.