Michael Hurley
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Michael Hurley

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Michael Hurley is an American Catholic, author, long-distance sailor, wilderness canoeist, retired attorney, and inveterate wanderer. He practiced civil trial law for 31 years in Texas and North Carolina before retiring in 2015. His debut novel, The Prodigal, won the Chanticleer Reviews Prize for Book of the Year in 2013. It was described as an “artistic masterpiece” by Foreword Reviews and one of the top five novels of 2013 in Booktrib.

Michael's second novel, The Vineyard, won the 2015 Eric Hoffer Award for General Fiction. It was described as a "riveting tale" by Publishers Weekly and as “addictive, escapist reading" and "deliriously satisfying” by Kirkus Reviews.

In non-fiction, Michael's essay collection, Letters from the Woods, was shortlisted for Book of the Year in 2005 by ForeWord Reviews. Michael's first memoir, Once Upon A Gypsy Moon, was published by Center Street (Hachette Book Group) in 2013. His essays on politics, law, life and faith have appeared in the US in The Washington Times, The Raleigh News and Observer, and American Thinker, and in the UK in the Daily Skeptic, The Conservative Woman, and Country Squire magazine.

After his retirement from law practice in 2015, Michael failed in an attempt to sail his 1965 30-foot Allied Seawind ketch, "Prodigal," solo in June 2015 from Charleston, SC, to Ireland. Ten days into the passage, after Prodigal began taking on water, he abandoned ship to accept rescue from a training vessel of the Maine Maritime Academy on its own return voyage from Spain, 500 miles south of Nova Scotia. Three weeks later, he sold or gave away everything he owned, flew to Europe, and walked the Camino de Santiago, the 535-mile pilgrimage across France and Spain also known as the "Way of St. James." This began a lifestyle of voluntary ascetisim and wanderlust that continues to this day. His memoir of this life-changing decision, Tales from the Camino, remains his best-selling book in Europe and the UK.

After finishing the Camino, Michael lived for six months as a boarder in London and Wales, where he completed his third novel, The Passage. In 2016 he purchased a 1967 32-foot Camper Nicholson sloop, "Nevermore," in Essex, England, and sailed her nonstop and solo over 18 days from Calais, France, to La Palma, Canary Islands. He continued the voyage in January 2017, sailing 28-days nonstop across the Atlantic and making landfall on February 8, 2017, at St. Lucia, West Indies. After sailing and living aboard in the West Indies for more than a year, he sailed solo from Martinique to Miami in March 2018. In August 2018, he returned to Europe and walked the entire Camino a second time, after which he moved to London, where he lived for two years. In June 2020, Michael sailed Nevermore back across the Atlantic, solo and nonstop, from Greenport, New York to Plymouth, England. The passage took 35 days. He made landfall in Plymouth on August 5. Four days later, he sold Nevermore to a private buyer and donated the entire proceeds to the Ahoy Centre for disabled and at-risk youth in London.

After his solo Atlantic crossing, Michael spent the height of the Covid pandemic wandering Europe, staying a step ahead of lockdowns from England to Croatia to Rome to Tuscany to Estonia to Porto, Nazaré, and Lisbon, Portugal. He came home in March 2021 to live in Dallas. In March 2023, he left everything behind for a four-year motorcycle journey around the British Isles, Western and Eastern Europe, and North Africa.

Michael is currently working on a fourth novel, Gilead, and planning an eventual third memoir about the lessons of life as a wandering pilgrim.
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The Prodigal

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