The unlikely pilgrimage of Harold Fry

Rachel Joyce has created a real winner here - especially for Kate and I who found walking the perfect retirement activity around Lake Superior.  Harold would not have been any competition, in fact as the walk from south to north across England unfolds it is obvious Harold would take years to go around the lake, but that is not the story.  It is not an athlete, it is not a person who has a real goal.

This is a 65 year old man who has never done anything of any significance, a man who blended in as his best asset,  and in retirement, he probably would have filled a space and then died without notice.

But one day a letter comes from an old friend - a woman who had once did him a great favor.  She is dying and he must post a letter to her.  But he cannot find it in himself to post that letter.  Instead he walks from post to post until he meets a young woman at a gas station who inadvertently sends him on a quest.

If he walks, Queenie will not die!  So he writes her, he writes his abandoned wife and he begins a quest that becomes noticed - publicized and then gains life and stature even as it centers on the people who choose to join his pilgrimage and not on him.

He is truly a lost person and through the walk keeps Queenie alive, but more importantly finds life again in his marriage and retirement.  It is a story of personal discovery and is one of the best told tales I have read in years.  

A definite 10 for my book ratings.