RaveHouston ChronicleEgan’s journey is enjoyable, although it is the sort of book where you have to think about each chapter a good long while before moving on ... One of the most moving early visits he makes is to the tomb of St. Erkembode in Saint-Omer, France ... To see this and other holy places through Egan’s eyes is to grasp the mad beauty of institutional religion. While he never shies away from lies and outright cons that have been a part of the Church’s history, he also feels the power invested in these places by true believers ... A Pilgrimage to Eternity is both an engaging travelog and a meditative exploration of how religion and history have woven the tapestry of Europe together. It is also a brutal surgery on the soul trying to clear out the cancer of broken promises from the Church. It has more questions than answers, but they are the right questions to get a reader walking along the road to… somewhere. Making the journey is more important than arriving. Egan has illustrated that with deftness and brilliance.
