I finished reading "Walking On Water," the final book in Richard Paul Evans' "The Walk" series, this morning. My favorite author has once again lived up to his nickname, the "King of Kleenex". Alan Christoffersen once again finds his walk interrupted when he decides to return home upon learning that his father has had a heart attack. Along the way, he meets a woman--grieving over the death of her own husband--who reminds him of the regret he feels at not having had children with McKale. Upon reaching the hospital, Alan is once again reunited with Nicole, the woman he met when he changed her flat tire, who subsequently took him in after he was stabbed. Alan also discovers that his
father has been recording the family history. (Incidentally, Pastor Tim--whom Alan met in "The Road To Grace"--was wrong about the origins of the surname "Christoffersen"). He is forced to a examine his feelings for both Nicole and Falene, his former secretary from his advertising days at Madgic, the company he owned before it was stolen from him by his former partner, Kyle Craig. (Never trust anybody with 2 first names!) In the end, he makes his decision, but goes through a lot in the interim--the death of his father, Kailamai's bad jokes, coming to terms with his feelings for both Nicole and Falene, and reaching the end of his journey and deciding what to do with the rest of his life. For Alan, it was never about Key West. It was about moving forward. "In the end, it is not by knowledge that we make our journeys but by hope and faith: hope that our walk will be worthy of our steps and faith that we are going somewhere. And only when we come to the end of our journeys do we truly understand that every step of the way we were walking on water."
As sad as I am to come to the end of Alan's walk, I am eager to start reading "Where the Heart Is," by Billie Letts. I've seen the movie adaptation, and I hope the novel lives up to its cinematic counterpart.
A funny thing happens to Novalee Nation on her way to Bakersfield, California. Her ne'er-do-well boyfriend, Willie Jack Pickens, abandons her in an Oklahoma Wal-Mart and takes off on his own, leaving her with just 10 dollars and the clothes on her back. Not that hard luck is anything new to Novalee, who is "seventeen, seven months pregnant, thirty-seven pounds overweight--and superstitious about sevens.... For most people, sevens were lucky. But not for her," Billie Letts writes. "She'd had a bad history with them, starting with her seventh birthday, the day Momma Nell ran away with a baseball umpire named Fred..."
Still, finding herself alone and penniless in Sequoyah, Oklahoma is enough to make even someone as inured to ill fortune as Novalee want to give up and die. Fortunately, the Wal-Mart parking lot is the Sequoyah equivalent of a town square, and within hours Novalee has met three people who will change her life: Sister Thelma Husband, a kindly eccentric; Benny Goodluck, a young Native American boy; and Moses Whitecotton, an elderly African American photographer. For the next two months, Novalee surreptitiously makes her home in the Wal-Mart, sleeping there at night, exploring the town by day. When she goes into labor and delivers her baby there, however, Novalee learns that sometimes it's not so bad to depend on the kindness of strangers--especially if one of them happens to be Sam Walton, the superchain's founder.
I guess I have a thing for sad stories lately, especially as the day that my Grandma would've celebrated her 81st birthday approaches. I still miss her, but she's on that "journey" we all must take, "a step on the road to Home." She has completed her journey in this life, and until I make my own "journey" Home, I'll continue the "Journey Through A Book!"
