One morning Harold gets a letter from an old coworker, Queenie, that
she is dying. It has been 20 years since he has seen her but he is moved
beyond words by the letter and writes her back and heads to mail it and
just keeps walking.
He walks for over 80 days and over 600 miles. What follows is a story
of love and loss and redemption. A beautiful story of what happens when
you set out and put one foot in front of the other, both figuratively
and in Harold’s case literally.
It is not an easy journey, and as he quickly learns, and the reader
with him, it isn’t about the destination. The story of Harold, his wife
Maureen, their son David and of course Queenie is weaved throughout the
story of the walk across England from home to the hospice where Queenie
is and the people Harold meets along the way, some helpful others not so
much.
When I first started this book I didn’t know quite what to make of
it, but it’s quiet beauty moved me. It was a pure pleasure to read and
now I’m sad it’s over.
“He had learned that it was the smallness of people that filled him
with wonder and tenderness, and the loneliness of that too. The world
was made up of people people putting one foot in front of the other; and
a life might appear ordinary simply because the person living it had
been doing so for a long time. Harold could no longer pass a stranger
without acknowledging the truth that everyone was the same, and also
unique; and this this was the dilemma of being human.”
(finished Jan. 13, 2013)
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