My wife and I spent our holidays in Cornwall a few years ago. We traveled from the north through Plymouth to the south of Cornwall and back up to Minehead, passing places named Lizard’s End, Mousehole, and Land’s End. We walked parts of the Coastal Path. The landscape is rough and beautiful.

I got a novel about this area, The Salt Path, a week ago. It has become a famous book. I read it on the back and then on the Internet. I loved the book. Immediately after finishing it, I bought its sequel, Wild Silence.

In The Salt Path, Raynor Winn tells how she and her husband walk the coastal path of Cornwall that I had seen parts of that summer. They follow Paddy Dillon, a travel writer and experienced hiker who followed the path a few decades before them. Dillon wrote a book about his trip, South West Coast Path—Plymouth to Poole.

Winn and her husband Moth have just gone bankrupt and lost their house to an untruthful friend, and Moth has been diagnosed with an incurable disease of the nerve system.

Their view of life changes as they follow the path. Strangely, Walking seems to improve Moth’s health.