Before our road trip through England, I searched for the perfect book
to take along on the iPad. I wanted a book set in England that would
compliment our travel route and Harold Fry was the perfect companion.
At the beginning of the novel, Harold receives a note from a woman named
Queenie, a brewery co-worker from his distant past. She has dictated
her note to a worker at the hospice where she has presumably gone to
die. Harold writes back and tells his insecure and cloying wife that he
is walking to the post office with his note. But when he gets there,
he decides to walk to the next post office, and then the next –
believing somehow that his walking is keeping Queenie alive. His
unlikely pilgrimage becomes a sort of “Forrest Gump” mission, where he
is joined by other unlikely pilgrims. As we motored along on the wrong
side of the road through the English countryside, we passed towns that I
had seen through Harold’s eyes already on the trip. Harold Fry’s story
was touching, life affirming and perfect for this trip.
(See my next review for Rachel Joyce’s Perfect)
