The Long Walk Home
Will North, 2008
Crown Publishing
312 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780307383037
Summary
The miracle of love after loss and longing
The Long Walk Home is a story about grief and hope, about love and loss, and about two people struggling with the agonizing complexities of fidelity–to a spouse, to a moral code, to each other, and to a passion neither thought would ever appear again.
By turns lyrical and gripping, set amid a landscape of breathtaking beauty and unpredictable danger, this is a story you will not soon forget. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
His own words:
I think we can safely blame it on Margaret D’Ascoli, though I suppose Henry Wadsworth Longfellow may bear some responsibility as well.
Mrs. D’Ascoli was my eighth grade English teacher, Longfellow was the author of—among other things—the epic poem, Evangeline, about which we had to write a critical essay. When the day came for the papers to be handed back, the class was awash in anxiety. Mrs. D’Ascoli was one tough cookie, and an even tougher grader. She walked through the aisles returning the essays to everyone but me, then went back to the front of the room and stood before the class until the rustle of papers ceased. Holding one last paper in her hand, she said, “As you know, I always give grades for both style and content. I have here a paper to which I have awarded not two, but three A’s: one for style, one for content, and one for something I cannot begin to explain to you. Then she handed me my essay. There was a silence like death, followed by excited whispers. I wanted to crawl into a hole and quietly die from embarrassment.
It wasn’t until later, on the walk home from school, that I felt excited, and it wasn’t because of the three A’s. It was because, at an age when you know with absolute certainty that you’re a totally worthless speck in the universe, I’d learned there was something I could do better than anyone else I knew: I could write.
Ever since then, writing’s been my “meal ticket.” It was my ticket out of a chaotic and sometimes frightening family in a steadily deteriorating neighborhood in Yonkers, just over the New York City border. It was my ticket to scholarships for an undergraduate degree in English, and then a graduate degree in journalism. It carried me through a series of jobs and ultimately, at the tender age of 30, to an appointed position in the Carter Administration. Much as I loved that job, one of the best things that ever happened to me was the election of Ronald Reagan, who promptly fired me and forced me to choose between holding a job and becoming an author. I chose the latter.
Over the years, I’ve written more than a dozen books, all non-fiction. Initially, they were about what might be called “progressive public policy issues.” Somewhere along the line, I also became a ghostwriter—for a President, a Vice-President, a famous mountaineer and explorer, a team of Everest climbers, a group of dinosaur-hunters, and a couple of pioneering doctors. I also wrote a series of off-the-beaten-track guidebooks to the place I love most in the world: Britain.
And I married. Twice. And divorced. Twice—though I remained friends with both of my ex-wives. I have an achingly wonderful son and a splendid grandson (yikes!) and daughter-in-law.
One last thing: If you Google “Will North” you won’t find any of my nonfiction books. “North” is my pen name. I’m not trying to be mysterious; my real surname is nearly unpronounceable unless you have a lisp, and virtually impossible to remember—not a good thing for a novelist. (From the author's website.)
Book Reviews
The Long Walk Home movingly conveys the life-changing effects of love between two middle-aged people with a lot of unshared history.
Seattle Times
North's bittersweet, romantic novel has invited some early comparisons with the bestselling work of Nicholas Sparks and Robert James Waller.
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
In this lyrical first novel about love and loss by a ghostwriter for Bill Clinton and Al Gore, Alec, a former speech writer for Jimmy Carter, walks like a pall bearer from Heathrow Airport to North Wales to scatter the ashes of his late wife. Along the way, he meets and begins an affair with Fiona Edwards, the spirited and married operator of a Welsh bed-and-breakfast. Fiona's marriage to her shepherd husband David is foundering on the shoals of mutual lack of interest and David's pesticide-related illness that keeps him relegated to separate quarters. There are moral dilemmas aplenty, most notably when Alec discovers David near death in the same treacherous region where he just released his wife's remains. North offers vivid descriptions of the Welsh countryside, capturing its local dialect, flora and fauna, and wild weather, but his romantic boomer tale—which includes some overwrought poetry and a few witty words on Carter's handling of the Iran hostage crisis—is sometimes too idyllic. If Nicholas Sparks set a novel in North Wales, it would read a lot like this.
Publishers Weekly
How we perceive love and acknowledge its obligations is at the core of this first novel by ghostwriter North.... If visions of Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep come to mind, which they did briefly for this reviewer, the similarity to Robert Waller's The Bridges of Madison County ends there. Fi and Alec do share an immediate connection, but their witty exchanges and the fascinating descriptions of climbing, cooking (yes, Alec can do it in the kitchen), and lambing are absorbing from the very first. Alec has experienced loss and doesn't want any more of it; Fi accepts that her dreams might have to remain just that.... A joy to read.
Library Journal
New Yorker Alec Hudson is a man with a mission. Determined to fulfill his ex-wife's dying request to have her ashes scattered on a remote Welsh mountain, the site of one of their happiest times in life, Alec decides to work through the mourning process by walking from Heathrow to North Wales. There he meets Fiona Edwards, the proprietor of a quaint farmhouse bed-and-breakfast. Prevented from scaling the mountain by inclement weather, Alec is drawn into life on the farm, helping out with lambing season and falling into an easy companionship with the outgoing Fiona, whose reclusive husband is suffering the ill effects of poisoning from a cleansing agent used on the sheep. When Alec and Fiona finally recognize and act on their mutual attraction, lifelong notions of loyalty and duty endlessly complicate their relationship. With its exploration of love at midlife, this debut novel will remind readers of the megahit Bridges of Madison County. —Wilkinson, Joanne
Booklist
Discussion Questions
1. Alec and Gwynne have been divorced for years, yet when she becomes ill he cares for her. Do you know of someone who has been called upon to care for a dying former spouse? Can you imagine yourself in such a situation?
2. When Alec decides to walk to Wales with Gwynne’s ashes, what do you think he’s trying to accomplish? Have you ever done anything for similar motives? Can you see yourself ever doing something extreme like that?
3. When Alec arrives at Fiona’s farm, he is a man of few words. What is it about Fiona that changes him? What is it about Alec that changes Fiona—unlocking her own pain and her own capacity to love fully?
4. Fiona and Alec share a central emotional characteristic: they are both caretakers by nature and upbringing. Because of this, what do they bring to, and bring out of, each other?
5. Fiona and Alec both lost a parent when they were young: Fiona’s father drowned, Alec’s father drank himself to death. How has each of them been affected?
6. British-born novelist Jonathan Raban has said of The Long Walk Home that it is the mountain, “capricious Cadair Idris,” to which the reader must look “for the story’s deeper implications.” What do you think he means by that? Is the mountain itself a character in the story?
7. Will North admits to being, well...a guy. Do you think he succeeds in understanding and revealing Fiona’s head and heart?
8. Ultimately, despite the fact that she is married, Fiona and Alec become lovers. Both of them understand that this is wrong...and yet believe it is also utterly right. How can that be? And why do we find ourselves rooting for them?
9. Fiona has been caring for her ailing husband for three years. Do you think she should have anticipated his attempted suicide?
10. When Alec discovers David dying on the mountain, he knows that one option is to do nothing. There must be a moment, a fraction of a second, when Alec sees how life would be made simpler by David’s death. Given what happens to David—given what happens to Fiona and Alec—do you think he made the right decision?
11. Fiona’s daughter, Meaghan, is so close to and protective of her father that she sometimes behaves as if she believes she would be a better caretaker for him than his own wife. Does that ring true to you? How well do you think Fiona handles Meaghan’s possessiveness?
12. The Long Walk Home is a book about fidelity. Beyond its most obvious form—fidelity to a spouse—what other issues of fidelity do these characters wrestle with? If you were Alec, how would you choose? If you were Fiona, what would you do?
(Questions issued by publisher.)