A Walk to Garabandal is lyrical. It is a walk back in time that also touches eternity. Kelly tells a traveler's tale full of wonderment, and of his personal impressions of the faces and places, local dances and cafes, old buses and taxicab drivers that he came to know. His story forms, as Wordsworth described, a poem from the "spontaneous overflow of emotion recollected in tranquility."
What this book does that most other books on the subject do not, is combine tedious research with humor, and youthful emotion with mature reflection. A young bachelor American high school Spanish teacher on summer vacation in Spain in 1969, Kelly hears a man in a bar talking about four little girls claiming heavenly visits in the foothills of the Cantabrian Mountains.
He risks hiking three miles into the hills to their remote mountain village. Despite a thought-provoking encounter with one of the twenty-year-old visionaries in the family home/ bar/three table restaurant, he tells his British companions that he won't be back.
But plans change. He returns to live in the area and becomes acquainted with the villagers. They go fishing in the trout streams that flow by the village, hike in the hills picking mushrooms and play cards in the bar. Ed shares with us these experiences and what he heard and discussed with the four visionaries. He devotes chapters describing the time spent in the presence of the uniquely attractive twenty-two-year-old visionary, Conchita.
For those who believe in Garabandal, this book provides a fresh account of familiar details seen from new angles. For skeptics, the author assures us that it's more logical to doubt that Americans walked on the moon than deny that Our Lady visited every street of the mountain village of Garabandal.
We are living in the end times.
