One Pilgrim's Progress

Who would true valour see,

Let him come hither;

One here will constant be

Come wind, come weather.

There's no discouragement

Shall make him once relent

His first avowed intent

To be a pilgrim.

--John Bunyan, The Pilgrim's Progress

Maybe it's time for a modern-day American road-trip story. Not a romantic saga of a young man or woman searching for meaning in life through fast-driving adventure, rather a story about an older person, a populist in the most real sense, an unassuming character who has experienced a pedestrian yet full life, on a mission to save an old friend, literally, by putting one foot in front of the other.

This is the basis of the novel by British writer Rachel Joyce, The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry published in 2012. It's her first novel, which has been made into a feature film currently showing in the U.K.

How eccentrically boring, you might say. A perfectly slow-paced story from stuffy old England. The protagonist is an elderly milquetoast and timid as a lamb. Where's the thrill? The edge? No plane crashes, guns or explosions?

Spoiler alert: I can't recall catching myself laughing so much as I did at the conclusion of this story. 

Retired in his mid-sixties, Harold Fry receives a letter from a former fellow employee, a woman, Queenie Hennessy, who expresses her gratefulness for having known Harold from working together years ago. She currently is dying from cancer.

Based on a subsequent chance meeting with a young woman full of positive affirmations -- "If you have faith you can do anything" -- Harold decides on the spot to begin walking to see Queenie to save her from dying of cancer. "As long as I walk, [Queenie] must live," he says.

No matter that Queenie lies in bed on the other side of  the country. No matter that Harold has only the vaguest idea of how to get there. No matter that he has no supplies, not even a cell phone, and will be walking in yachting shoes. He henceforth begins his pilgrimage. He locates a phone to tell his wife of many years Maureen that he is walking to Burwick-upon-Tweed. Tootles.

Underway on foot, Harold's mind drifts from present to past to future, with doubts, recriminations, sorrows, hopes, elations and more. He resolves to embrace the virtue of kindness. There is a son involved. A dissolving marriage. There is Queenie and their special relationship. And the inescapable hardships and surprises of the road and its characters.

Many are drawn to Harold, for deserving and selfish reasons. At one point he becomes a media sensation with a gaggle of followers. Think Forrest Gump. His fame, however, is ephemeral, while Harold trudges on to meet his destiny and his beloved Queenie. 

My wife Barbara found the book on a used book shelf at the Kilauea Bakery on the island of Kauai. While reading it she would occasionally chuckle. "You might like this story," she said. "It's right up your alley." The book cover, adorned with a flowery font, did not appeal to me. I had picked up Open Season, the original Joe Pickett story by CJ Box, on the free shelf at the Princeville Library for the plane ride home.

Back in Santa Cruz, I dove into Harold Fry's pilgrimage. My journey, from page to page, simulated Harold's step-by-step odyessy. I discovered Joyce's novel much more enjoyable, with unexpected turns and rewarding lessons of life. Box's story was formulaic with a predictable ending. Many novels today are written by contract. The publisher wants 400 pages. The writer is to maintain the formula that readers expect. Sometimes I feel as though such novels are all filler, no meat.

Joyce says she started writing the Harold Fry story when her own father was dying from cancer. "He was very frightened and so was I," she says in the back of the book. "I was appalled at the idea of not having my father. I was appalled at the idea of watching him die. But both happened, and while they did I wrote this story about a man who sets off to save someone else. It was my escape. My way of making sense. And somehow also my way of finding the flip side to my complicated, wild grief."

Again, I finished The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry laughing. 

320 pages.