BEO BOOK CLUB

WHEN IS THE NEXT MEETING?

Monday, July 7th @5:30 pm (PT)

WHAT IS THE BOOK?

In the Footsteps of Smugglers by Georgina Howard.

*Georgina will be joining our conversation.

THE 411…

“After eight years living in Copenhagen, an English journalist, driven by a passion for languages and mountains, finally rebels. With little more than an assortment of Earl Grey teabags, Danish candles, and a map, Georgina Howard abandons her all-too-cosy, cinnamon-scented lifestyle and drives south.

The journey leads to wild and craggy landscapes in the Basque Pyrenees on the French/Spanish border, where place names are written in a bizarre, foreign tongue full of ‘x’s and ‘z’s. Losing her heart to this beautiful land and her pride to the inscrutability of the language, Howard moves into an isolated barn in a mountain hamlet. While pagan festivals reverberate through the valleys, her Basque neighbours – farmers, shepherds, a gravedigger, and a champion female lumberjack – observe her, bemused.

Only when her daughter, Marion, is born – after an unsuccessful relationship with an eccentric Basque miller – do Howard’s neighbours drop their reserve and welcome her into their homes. Taking Marion’s upbringing upon themselves, they fatten her up on spicy Basque sausages and black bean stews, teach her Basque nursery rhymes, and train her to milk sheep. Meanwhile, Howard converts a barn into the headquarters of an international business providing walking, culture, and language tours. Resigned to the ineptitude of their new neighbour, with patience and amusement, the locals tow her car out of ditches and teach her how to stack wood, catch mice, unblock septic tanks, and drink wine from a leather gourd.

In the Footsteps of Smugglers follows the adventures of an outsider: a single mother, linguist, cosmopolitan nomad, and cultural chameleon who paradoxically makes her home among an indigenous people deeply rooted in their land, with a language and culture dating back to Stone-Age times. Unwittingly, she repays their hospitality by luring anti-terrorist squads, blackmailers, and spies into their midst as the dramatic past of the Basque Country proves to have unexpected and far-reaching consequences. An inspiring, humorous travel memoir, Bradt’s In the Footsteps of Smugglers weaves behind-the-scenes vignettes of daily rural life and historical research to produce authentic insights on all things Basque, threaded with a rhapsody on the theme of identity.”

WHERE CAN I BUY IT?

You can purchase your Kindle or Audible here, or check your local bookstore.

HOW WILL WE MEET?

Via Zoom. If you’re already a member, we’ll send out the link closer to the date. If you’re not yet a member, sign up and we’ll send out the link closer to the date.