Ellis, a mystically inclined journalist of English and Cherokee descent, re-creates the Canterbury Tales' central journey on foot in this informative but unsatisfying follow-up to Walking the Trail: One Man's Journey Along the Cherokee Trail of Tears. As in that work, he seeks connections with his ancestry by engaging strangers along the walk, a journalistic method that might seem uniquely unsuited to outlining the English character. Remarkably, though, he connects with a good number of Tales-worthy eccentrics, including a Steve McQueen–loving monk and runaway teenagers who recite Chaucer from memory. Compelling as these characters may be, they never engage the reader; Ellis is satisfied with merely bouncing his own minor revelations off of them. " 'Yeah,' I said, 'the inner world means something to me as well' " is about where his easily won epiphanies bound along. Happily, he often veers into historical rambles that offer portraits of medieval life. His desire to use every piece of information he's uncovered leads to some leaps (as when a Ronald McDonald statue prompts a mini-essay on the role of jesters), but these are some of the best sections in the book. What is more worth knowing than that French pilgrims carried wax replicas of eyeballs? If only his thoughts about the modern world were equally grounded in fact. His final conclusions—e.g., "instead of taking pilgrimages... we have turned to 'miracles' in the form of every pill imaginable"—are as unconvincing as they are trite. Agent, Peter Miller. (On sale Mar. 4)
