He also relishes his personal encounters as he stops in each town. Harold’s journey begins pleasantly, as he enjoys being outside and seeing the first blooms of spring. The Frys’ widower neighbor, Rex, asks about Harold Maureen is ashamed and says he is in bed with an injury. She did not know Queenie but cannot understand her husband’s compulsion to visit the woman on her deathbed. Maureen and Harold’s marriage is strained, and she fears he left her for good she is cold and cruel to him, having never fully recovered from the tragedy they endured 20 years ago. She avoids going outside or encountering the neighbors. She scrubs the house spotless, including the room of their son, David. Despite her doubts and his lack of proper footwear, Harold sets off.Īt home, Maureen goes about her routine of the past 20 years. When he calls Maureen to inform her, she says it is preposterous to walk over 600 miles with no prior planning. He phones the hospice to tell them he is walking from his home in Kingsbridge to Berwick and to tell Queenie to wait for him.
Inspired, Harold decides to walk to Berwick to see Queenie he hopes knowing he is coming will keep her alive. On the way, he stops at a garage and shares Queenie’s story with the young attendant, who explains that having faith helped her aunt who had cancer. While walking to the mailbox to send her a reply, he realizes it will be delivered faster if he walks it directly to the post office. Not having spoken to Queenie in 20 years, Harold is stunned. Harold and Maureen Fry’s daily breakfast routine is interrupted by the delivery of a letter from an old friend of Harold’s: Queenie Hennessy, a former coworker, writes to inform Harold that she is dying of cancer and receiving hospice care in Berwick-on-Tweed. This guide uses the 2012 Random House edition.Ĭontent Warning: The source material contains discussion of drug and alcohol abuse and death by suicide. Her books have sold over five million copies worldwide and been translated into 36 languages. She is also the author of Perfect, The Music Shop, and Miss Benson’s Beetle.
Before she began writing novels, Joyce was an actor and a playwright for 20 years.
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