Daughter two bought this for me. She does work for a bookseller and she thought this one would appeal to me. It did. And I spent another very late night finishing it before heading home - not because I thought I needed to finish it, but because I couldn't sleep.
A retired brewery sales rep (BTW - this is British, very British) gets a note from a former co- worker who was fired in disgrace many years earlier. She is dying of cancer and just wanted to say goodbye. So - he writes her a note and on the way to mail it, he decides to walk to the place where she was in hospice care because he feels that she will not die as long as he is walking.
To put things in perspective, Harold and his wife live at the southernmost tip of England and (did you guess?) Queenie is at the farthest point from their home that is not in Scotland - even in England that is a pretty fair walk. He sets out as he is, with no preparation or explanation wearing "yachting shoes" and a light jacket.
It could go pretty silly from that start, but somehow it doesn't. He changes, his wife changes, people he meets change him even as he changes them. He seems to feel a sense of responsibility to the people he meets and to those who join him on his walk for a time. He wants to make things right for them, for Queenie, for his wife, Maureen, but all he can do is continue to walk, so that's what he does.
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