Ordinary Magic
Promises I Kept to My Mother Through Life, Illness, and a Very Long Walk on the Camino de Santiago
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Narrated by:
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Cameron Powell
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By:
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Cameron Powell
About this listen
A terrifying diagnosis. An unbreakable bond. And two unforgettable journeys.
Cameron Powell has always struggled with goodbyes. On the day his marriage ends, he finds out his mother's cancer has returned, and this time, there may be no escape. Faced with the prospect of more chemo and surgery, his German-born mother, Inge, vows to conquer a 500-mile trek across Spain, and Cameron pushes aside his fears to walk by her side.
Joined by a misfit band of adventurers - a politically incorrect Spaniard, a theatrical Frenchwoman, a teenager who's never been far from home - Cameron and Inge write a fierce and funny travelogue about the rocky heights and hidden valleys of the Camino de Santiago. As a Camino memoir in the tradition of James Hitt or Bill Bryson, Ordinary Magic delivers.
But the hardest stretch comes three years later, when Inge's health declines, and Cameron, ready or not, must accept the challenge to remain as present to his mother as he can. Cameron begins to record, in still more chiseled prose, his real-time impressions of life's most difficult voyage. What he created has become one of literature's great love letters and a uniquely unflinching insight into how we all truly can create love and meaning in our lives, even amidst the fear and sadness we ll all face from time to time.
Propelled by the searing immediacy of Cameron's own fear and sadness, this deeply felt memoir opens up new insight into what it means to be a man, and takes us - with wisdom, humor, and an overflowing tenderness - into one of the most challenging journeys true friends can ever take.
If you like candid mother-son relationships, humorous tales from the trail, and in-the-moment insights on living a life of resilience and purpose, then you'll love Cameron Powell's luminous, inspirational true story about pilgrimage, presence, and letting go.
Ordinary Magic is the love story, lifelong inspiration, and soulful laugh and cry you need in your life right now. You can also join our community celebrating the ordinary magic of love and resilience, and wake up your love for yourself and others.
"Studded with gems of spirited observation and wit. Is this black humor? If so, it's of the most fond and loving sort, and Inge, Powell's mother, emerges as an indelible heroine. Powell is a writer to watch." (Mary Dearborn, Hemingway: A Biography)
"An epic love letter. Stunning, unique, unlike anything I've read before." (Julia Scheeres, Jesus Land: A Memoir)
Powerful, inspiring and, amazingly, almost impossible to put down. (Mary Dearborn, The Happiest Man Alive: A Biography of Henry Miller
Author interview:
How did the story begin?
Mom and I blogged while on the Camino de Santiago. Readers loved the travel writing, and said our journey was inspiring and hilarious. But when the Camino ended, I stopped blogging. I started again when Mom's health began to decline because I just had to write. My decision to share my path with others, on the blog, was one of the best I've ever made. The love was overwhelming, a light in my darkness.
What surprised you most about readers reactions?
People saw the humor in it all. And they kept saying the posts were beautiful. I realized people have a real hunger for what really matters.
What makes this memoir different?
As a story of a mother through the eyes of her son, it's so rare as to be overdue. Readers have really responded to the sheer grit of my mom. And because I have a lifelong fascination with the human mind and heart, I saw a way to make my mom's psychological resilience something every reader can learn from.
©2011 Cameron Powell (P)2019 Cameron PowellListeners also enjoyed...
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A hilarious and heartbreaking memoir-in-remedies by a self-described "professional soul-searcher" that details a journey of self-discovery through more than 160 tonics, seminars, regimens, and transformative therapies. With a voice that is at once intimate and hilarious, Megan captures the openness and honesty necessary for people to take a new path in life. Listeners will open the audiobook with curiosity about all the different healing therapies that Megan tries, but leave with a new understanding of themselves.
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Mr. Toad's Wild Ride has some serious competition!
- By Elisa R. Goodman on 02-15-19
By: Megan Griswold
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Little Matches
- A Memoir of Finding Light in the Dark
- By: Maryanne O'Hara
- Narrated by: Maryanne O'Hara
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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When their only child was diagnosed with cystic fibrosis (CF) at the age of two, Maryanne O'Hara and her husband were told that Caitlin could live a long life or be dead in a matter of months. Thirty-one years later, Caitlin lost her battle with this devastating disease following an excruciating two-year wait on the transplant list and a last-minute race to locate a pair of healthy lungs. The sudden spiral of events left Maryanne in an existential crisis, searching to find an answer to the eternal question: Why we are here?
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I don't know who needs to read it...
- By H. Hill on 04-18-23
By: Maryanne O'Hara
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Braver Than You Think
- Around the World on the Trip of My (Mother's) Lifetime
- By: Maggie Downs
- Narrated by: Rachel Fulginiti
- Length: 10 hrs and 26 mins
- Unabridged
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As a child, Maggie Downs often doubted that she would ever possess the courage to visit the destinations her mother dreamed of one day seeing. "You are braver than you think," her mother always insisted. That statement would guide her as, over the course of one year, Downs backpacked through seventeen countries - visiting all the places her mother, struck with early-onset Alzheimer's disease, could not visit herself - encountering some of the world's most striking locales while confronting the slow loss of her mother.
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Not Ypur Typical Ttavel Destinations
- By Pammerpower on 06-12-20
By: Maggie Downs
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Wildflower
- By: Drew Barrymore
- Narrated by: Drew Barrymore
- Length: 7 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Wildflower is a portrait of Drew's life in stories as she looks back on the adventures, challenges, and incredible experiences of her earlier years. It includes tales of living on her own at 14 (and how laundry may have saved her life), getting stuck in a gas station overhang on a cross-country road trip, saying good-bye to her father in a way only he could have understood, and many more adventures and lessons that have led her to the successful, happy, and healthy place she is today.
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Hold the shrieking !
- By Dawne on 11-27-15
By: Drew Barrymore
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Finding Chika
- A Little Girl, an Earthquake, and the Making of a Family
- By: Mitch Albom
- Narrated by: Mitch Albom
- Length: 4 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Chika Jeune was born three days before the devastating earthquake that decimated Haiti in 2010. She spent her infancy in a landscape of extreme poverty, and when her mother died giving birth to a baby brother, Chika was brought to The Have Faith Haiti Orphanage that Albom operates in Port Au Prince. With no children of their own, the 40-plus children who live, play, and go to school at the orphanage have become family to Mitch and his wife, Janine. But at age five, Chika is suddenly diagnosed with something a doctor there says "no one in Haiti can help you with."
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BUY READ AND RECOMMEND THIS BOOK
- By The Birds. on 11-05-19
By: Mitch Albom
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Everything You Ever Wanted
- A Memoir
- By: Jillian Lauren
- Narrated by: Jillian Lauren
- Length: 8 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
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In her younger years, Jillian Lauren was a college dropout, a drug addict, and an international concubine in the Prince of Brunei's harem, an experience she immortalized in her best-selling memoir, Some Girls. In her 30s, Jillian's most radical act is learning the steadying power of love when she and her rock star husband adopt an Ethiopian child with special needs.
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Great for adoptive families
- By berry bomb on 07-06-22
By: Jillian Lauren
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Fault Lines
- A Novel
- By: Emily Itami
- Narrated by: Lydia Wilson
- Length: 5 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Mizuki is a Japanese housewife. She has a hardworking husband, two adorable children, and a beautiful Tokyo apartment. It’s everything a woman could want, yet sometimes she wonders whether she would rather throw herself off the high-rise balcony than spend another evening not talking to her husband and hanging up laundry.
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Confused by the choice of narrator
- By Bri T. on 02-13-22
By: Emily Itami
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Your Voice in My Head
- A Memoir
- By: Emma Forrest
- Narrated by: Emma Forrest
- Length: 5 hrs and 3 mins
- Unabridged
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Emma Forrest, a British journalist, was just 22 and living the fast life in New York City when she realized that her quirks had gone beyond eccentricity. In a cycle of loneliness, damaging relationships, and destructive behavior, she found herself in the chair of a slim, balding, and effortlessly optimistic psychiatrist--a man whose wisdom and humanity would wrench her from the dangerous tide after she tried to end her life.
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Great, quick read
- By Amazon Customer on 02-12-21
By: Emma Forrest
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Driving Miss Norma
- One Family's Journey Saying ""Yes"" to Living
- By: Tim Bauerschmidt, Ramie Liddle
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove, Nan McNamara
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
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When Miss Norma was diagnosed with uterine cancer, she was advised to undergo surgery, radiation, and chemotherapy. But instead of confining herself to a hospital bed for what could be her last stay, Norma - newly widowed after nearly seven decades of marriage - rose to her full height of five feet and told her doctor, "I'm 90 years old. I'm hitting the road." Packing what she needed, Norma took off on an unforgettable cross-country journey with three professional nomads - her retired son, Tim; his wife, Ramie; and their standard poodle, Ringo.
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so moving and inspiring
- By Travis Stone on 07-10-19
By: Tim Bauerschmidt, and others
What listeners say about Ordinary Magic
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- AmandaLI
- 08-25-24
Achingly raw, precious story.
I loved reading and then listening to this incredible travelogue and life story about the kaleidoscope of feelings toward and about our mothers, from childhood recollections to the stunned realization of a final embrace. To reach late adulthood and still have a mother is of course a blessing. But we all have different memories of tender years and it can take a lifetime to fully understand the circumstances our mothers raised us, who they were before “us”, and why we feel the way we do about life and family.
I met Cameron at a legal conference, and happened to share his book with my own mother this summer while she visited me “the last time” from thousands of miles away. My mother and I are also immigrants - me double - and have both spent decades finding and making new friends as we bounced through different towns and countries. As an eager hiker, I was delighted by Cameron and Inge’s preparations for and travails on the Camino de Santiago. As someone with late diagnosed Asperger’s, who has also searched for meaning after divorce, mid-life career change and multiple relocations, I was heartened and inspired by Cameron’s candor and humor describing life’s ups, downs and plateaus.
We all have cause to reflect upon the weirdness of people and events as we go about our days, but it takes a talented writer to capture moments with such humor and precision that we gasp and guffaw from our quiet reading nook. There’s an abundance of sweet and silly vignettes throughout the book, but especially on the way to Santiago. I was tickled and touched by the challenges of resting through the “pre-dawn movement of the night’s orchestral maneuvers in the dark” and alternately evocative, elegant and quirky descriptions of the landscape, its sensory delights, and fellow travelers. A “particularly fine-looking cow, a dishwater blonde”; fennel fields so fragrant it was “like walking through a licorice factory”; and Rene the eagle, resting his bones “right next to the feng shuiist area.” I chuckled and smiled as I turned the pages, and again when I listed to the audiobook.
If Book I of Ordinary Magic was sweet, funny and fascinating, Book II, was a profound gift. As Cameron tended his mother through her final weeks, learning more than he expected about himself, his friends, and the meaning of love and life, he also guided his readers to contemplate their own family stories and place in the world: “We end, just as we burst from the womb, wrestling with our story.” Most of us have experienced time slowing down in a moment of paralyzing fear. But will be be able to hit pause on our busy lives when our loved one’s time comes, to extract and savor each feeling, moment, realization? I suspect many of us miss a lot, until the day it hits us: “Slow down. You may never cut a banana for her again. I slow down. Pay attention. I intend love into each cut, and love tumbles into the bowl.”
Ordinary Magic was the most meaningful book I’ve ever read about exploring and reclaiming your heritage, the many and various ways to love your mother, and the importance of good friends and shared adventures.
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- Karina Contreras
- 01-15-20
Beautiful story
I'll be walking El camino de Santiago in June and I thought the story was going to be only related to it; however, the story is a beautiful story of love and kindness. Thanks Inge for being an inspiration. I wish we would have crossed our caminos.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 05-04-20
two great books in one
This is a well written and powerful memoir that allows the reader to not only travel with the author and his mom but to travel with the author as he sees his mother as a woman of strength and courage. For those who have lost a love one, this book will tug really hard at those places that haven't healed (or may never). For those you have fortunately been spared the inevitable heartache, this book will remind you to hug those close to you a little tighter. This book is really two great books in one with excellent passages and descriptive words about the trials and triumphs of walking the Camino. Take the time to read and explore this work..it will be time well spent.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Thomas
- 12-02-19
Riveting, gut wrenching, awe inspiring...
This is not your standard travelogue. It is not your standard tale. It is an intimate window into the deepest depths of pain and the highest peaks of adventure.
Recommended for anybody considering hiking the El Camino, anybody who has dealt with or is dealing with cancer… And anybody wanting to savor every last moment of their life. This book encouraged me to start doing that right now!
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3 people found this helpful
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- Soren
- 06-05-23
About a Mom
This book is more about a mom than a camino. I wish this book got a lot more notice for the fact that this book fits that venue more than the travel venue it pops up for. A perfect present for mother's day or a mom's birthday.
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- Edward j. Treschuk
- 10-22-20
Loved it!
One of the best “walking” stories!
Based on the walk, but lessons about love.
Share with all you love!
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1 person found this helpful
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- butterfly777
- 11-20-22
Magnificent
I have no words for the beauty displayed in this story! May Inge rest in peace.
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- gerard
- 12-29-20
wonderful story wonderful performance
I always enjoy when the author reads the book themselves. Ordinary Magic is next level. Cameron's impressions and struggles with the heavy emotional content while reading it adds so much to this story and experience.
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- DueNorth
- 06-19-22
A must read and recommend to friends and family.
Heartfelt gratitude to this most genuine account of love, loss, and the celebration of life. The authors deep connection and undying love towards his mother is reflected in this thoughtful account of being present throughout her chronic illness, the pains and frustrations of navigating the healthcare system, incorrect diagnoses, the ups and downs of failing health, and complete dedication to be present and fulfill her last wishes to include the profound and arduous, but spiritually charged hike on the Camino de Santiago from France to Spain.
As a fellow traveler on the Camino with my own son in '19 to grieve loss and strengthen resolve in grace, I understand its value and hope this book reaches many readers, who may decide to join the millions who have taken this amazing journey as well. The parallels to life the Camino provides are clear. Its joys, sorrows, challenges and victories, confusion and epiphanies witnessed and endured on the Camino are part of life's individual story. That the author so adeptly and often humorously reflected his experience with his mother and friends they met along the way made it simply hard to put down. His grasp of history only adds to the value of the Camino over the centuries. Finally, his presence during his mother's journey, critical conversations and recollections, and beliefs about the power and necessity of forgiveness and empathy are key messages to heal the human spirit and provide support to those in need as well as ourselves. In sum, a beautiful story about life, death, grieving, and moving forward. There is something for everyone in this book.
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- Tim Daniels
- 08-05-22
Just excellent !
What a happy ,sad, funny, snarky, irreverent , rude, gracious, sappy, bitter, spiteful, forgiving ,angry, Joyous book.
Read it you won't be sorry.
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