Queenie Hennessy is dying. Lying in hospice with the advanced stages of throat cancer, she writes a letter to her old friend and colleague Harold Fry to thank him for his friendship. This letter inspires Harold to make a 600-mile pilgrimage on foot to see Queenie.
Harold sends a note telling Queenie to wait for him. Accompanying Queenie in her anticipation of Harold's arrival are a motley crew of colorful hospice patients and the kindly, lovable nuns who take care of them. One of the nuns, Sister Mary Inconnu, dictates letters from Queenie to Harold.
There are two things Queenie has kept secret from Harold: the first is that she is in love with him. The second is that she feels responsible for his son David's death.
While Harold's journey gains followers and media attention, Queenie trudges through a dreamlike haze of painkillers and the anguish of her condition so she can hang on to see Harold one last time. The story flashes back to Queenie's youth, romances, and relationships. We learn of Queenie and Harold's deep and abiding friendship and Queenie's unrequited love for the married Harold.
After David's death, Queenie moves to a beach house to create a sea garden. It becomes somewhat of an attraction throughout the last part of Queenie's life as she fills it with pieces of nature that represent her life's heartaches, losses, loves, and joys. Queenie's garden becomes the backdrop for this poignant tale as she depicts her anything but ordinary life.
Harold is a gentleman (a gentle man) who always wishes the best for people. The death of his son almost destroys him but his pilgrimage, through Queenie's eyes, plays a part in his healing. As Queenie lays dying, she thinks about all the years she loved Harold and that she thought a part of her life was missing. But she realizes it was there all along. She mistook her happiness for something ordinary and failed to see that happiness was all around her all the time, through her time with Harold, her life with her parents, her time in her garden, and her interactions with other humans along the way.
This poignant novel is bursting with pearls of wisdom such as when one of the nuns explains that it doesn't matter if one person believes one thing and someone else believes another because we share the same end. When Harold reaches the end of his pilgrimage, Queenie tells him that he has walked far enough, and it is time to go home. What a beautiful metaphor for life and for Queenie (a gentle woman) coming to the end of her life's journey. A heavenly twist comes along at the end to conclude this moving and excellent novel. Read this along with The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry and Maureen (about Harold's wife) and you'll be in for a three-part treat.
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