The Book
Break or Become
How Hard Roads Make Better Leaders
Break or Become is a memoir about loss, fatherhood, and the kind of leadership that only hard roads can teach. Six weeks after his wife died of cancer, Peter Rice took his two young sons to walk the Camino de Santiago across Spain. This is the story of what that journey taught him about endurance, presence, and leading when your own heart is breaking.
About the book
Break or Become is not another leadership book built on business theory and motivational lines. It is a raw and human story about the year everything changed.
Six weeks after his wife died of cancer, Peter Rice made a decision that sounds impossible. He took his two young sons across Spain to walk the Camino de Santiago. Step by step, across mountains and villages and long empty stretches of road, he found that the hardest moments do not only test us, they remake us.
Leadership, he came to believe, is not about control or titles. It is about endurance, presence, humility, and carrying responsibility when your own heart is breaking. This is a book about grief, fatherhood, faith, and service, and about the quiet courage it takes to keep moving forward when life changes for good.
What readers take away
Endurance over control
A definition of leadership measured by what you carry, not the authority you hold.
Presence in grief
How to show up for your team and your children while grieving in private.
Meaning on hard roads
Why your worst year can teach you the most, and how faith can be tested and deepened by loss.
You may find yourself in this book
- Leaders carrying something heavy in private while showing up in public.
- Parents raising children through loss, or raising a child with a disability.
- Anyone who has walked, or wants to walk, the Camino as a path through grief.
- People of faith looking for an honest account of belief tested by loss.
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Read Break or Become
Available now in paperback and for Kindle. More retailers coming soon.