Books

Beneath Heaven, All Kilometers Turn Inward

A Pilgrimage along the Via Francigena

For much of her life, Yuliya had been a seeker. By the time the children were grown and the teaching career ended, the roles that once filled her days had fallen away. She decided to walk the Via Francigena, the ancient road from Canterbury to Rome, hoping to find answers she had spent years looking for. What she did not foresee was the chain of events that would upend her carefully laid plans, turning the pilgrimage she had prepared for into something entirely different.

The route runs 2,200 kilometers, from the green hills of England through the vineyards of France, over the high passes of the Swiss Alps, and down into the cypress country of Italy. Yuliya walked it in ninety days, mostly alone, through the heat of late summer into the first snows of autumn.

Beneath Heaven, All Kilometers Turn Inward is the story of that walk, and of the deeper journey beneath it: the letting go of the roles she had worn, the return to who she had always been, the devotion that deepened with every step. It is a book for seekers and walkers, for armchair pilgrims and anyone ready to find the way back to self.