The Ones Who Walked at Night (Paperback)

Six strangers met in the dark before dawn on the Camino de Santiago, walking west into a country they cannot see, each carrying something they would rather no one knew.

There is the quiet man who gives a false name at the foot of the mountain. The young pilgrim walking toward a life he is no longer sure he wants. The woman whose warmth is a little too practiced. And somewhere in the loose line of headlamps, patient and unhurried, someone who has been waiting all along for one of them to grow tired enough, or happy enough, to forget.

On the road, in the dark, people say things they would never say in the light, to a stranger they will part from by noon, who cannot hold it against them. But not everyone on this road is a stranger. And a lie, once it starts walking, does not stop.

Six set out. One is lying. And lies don't walk forever.

A literary mystery set on the ancient pilgrim road across northern Spain, The Ones Who Walked at Night is a novel about the masks we wear, the confessions we make in the dark, and the truth that is always, patiently, walking to catch us.

Alexius Fuentes has walked the Camino de Santiago and writes about the road and the people drawn to it, about why it calls to us and what it does to those who answer. The Ones Who Walked at Night is his first novel. He writes about the road, the ones who walk it, and the truths they carry west.