Walking with Sam

Andrew McCarthy, a New York Times bestselling writer who is also known for 1980s films such as St. Elmo's Fire and Pretty in Pink, watches his eldest son Sam step toward adulthood and wishes the years would move more slowly. Hoping to forge a closer bond before Sam leaves home, and to retrace a journey that changed his own life decades earlier, McCarthy proposes that the two of them tackle the Camino de Santiago, a roughly 500-mile trek across Spain.

Over five weeks on the rugged route, father and son held more candid conversations than they had managed in the previous twenty years. Their talks ranged from divorce and the struggles of school to McCarthy's strained relationship with his own father, the pressures of fame, and Flaming Hot Cheetos. Those subjects could either pull the pair apart or bind them more tightly.

The book recounts this expedition as the father and son cross the country while moving toward one another.