It's a good read if you want to kind of travel along with St. Francis, as the title suggests. It made me want to read an actual biography of this humble man and grow in admiration for him. An easy read that is goes back and forth between the present perspective of where Francis traveled and to the legends and stories surrounding him.

Loved loved loved this book!! Especially because I have been in most of the places the book mentions. Also after spending time in Assisi and learning more about Francesco I feel close to him and living peacefully just like he proposed.

Enjoyable bio of St. Francis combined with a travelogue of the author's journey through Italy in his footsteps. In some ways I often think this form is the most appropriate way to write medieval history--intertwining a modern day pilgrimage with research into the history of the locales being traveled. I love these books that work through the metaphor of the journey--a couple of others that fit this model are Rion Klawinski's n  Chasing the Heretics: A Modern Journey through the Medieval Languedocn (history of the Albigensian crusades) and John Freccero's n  Dante: The Poetics of Conversionn (a reading of the Comedy).

I've developed a deeper respect for what an earth shaking presence St. Francis was (in my book he's on par with Jesus and Gandhi)--and as I read the book I continually found myself thinking of different passages in Dante that seem to clearly reference Francis, so I'll need to re-visit the Comedy to think about that some more. I've always been interested in all the stories about Francis that talk about him getting rid of clothing (starting with his nude renunciation of his patrimony in the town piazza) and the implicit comparison to the people Dante ridicules for appropriating clothing that isn't theirs. I wrote my final paper for my medieval studies minor on this topic and I'd like to study it some more.