About this item
This story is not about avoiding death, but living life. Immerse yourself in the amazing story of 62-year old Edie Sundby, who, after being told she had 3 months to live, walked 800 miles instead through the California wilderness. Averaging 14 miles a day and stopping at life-giving missions along the way to revive her body and her soul. She followed that with another 800 mile walk through Northern Mexico to the California border. With fading strength and only one lung, she carried her mortality in every step and in the process opened up a profound communion with God and his creation. In her first walk, she was duplicating the trail of Father Junipero Serra, a Franciscan missionary in the mid-1800's who established nine missions between San Diego and San Francisco.
About the Author
Edie Littlefield Sundby was born August 15, 1951, next to the youngest of twelve children, in Caddo County Oklahoma on a cotton farm. Growing up in rural Oklahoma, she dreamed of being a cowboy, and picked cotton, sold Grit Newspapers ("America's Greatest Family Newspaper") , worked as a carhop, and at the weekly newspaper. In 1973 she graduated Phi Beta Kappa from the University of Oklahoma with a B.A. in Philosophy and History. To pay for college she worked as a janitor, a philosophy journal proofreader, a librarian, and as a door-to-door Bible salesman in Tennessee. After a stint in corporate America, working as a sales executive for IBM, and an area vice president of Pacific Telesis, she became a technology entrepreneur. In 2007 she was diagnosed with stage four gallbladder cancer and given three months to live. After 79 rounds of chemo, 4 major surgeries, and losing her right lung she walked the 1,600-mile El Camino Real Mission Trail that spans from Loreto, Mexico, to Sonoma, California. It was a walk of thanksgiving and gratitude for being alive. She and her husband live in San Diego, and are the parents of two children. She is still alive, and still walking. Her essays have appeared in the New York Times and the Wall Street Journal.
