‘The Long Walk Home’ by Will North

Romance at 50

Review Aug. 10, 2007

By Melinda BargreenSpecial to the Seattle Times

Very few romance novels are written by men, and even fewer are devoted to love among the 50-ish.

“The Long Walk Home,” a first novel by Will North, is both. And while it may seem reductive to describe North’s fictional debut as a romance novel, it has all the plot elements and the literary ambience of one -- facts that do not diminish a whit the enjoyment readers may take in this sweet-natured, idealistic tale.

There’s the handsome stranger, Alec Hudson, who shows up on the doorstep of a Welsh B&B owner, the pretty and charming Fiona Edwards, who is unhappily married. There’s the twist of fate (a spell of bad weather) that throws the couple together. And finally, there’s the dilemma of what to do when your heart says yes, and your ethics say no.

Alec, 50, has come to Wales on foot from Heathrow Airport, carrying a backpack with the ashes of his ex-wife -- whose final request was that her remains be scattered atop Cadair Idris, a Welsh mountain they had climbed together in happier days. He arrives at the charming B&B farmhouse, located right next to the mountain with a view of the Irish Sea, and is entranced not only by the house and the view but also by his 44-year-old hostess. Fiona is married to the dour and ailing David, a sheep farmer who is suffering from sheep-dip poisoning following years of exposure to toxic chemicals.

Novelist North’s means of getting David out of the way so a romance can develop is a bit clunky (David, who has become sensitive to chemicals, lives out of the house in a former hay barn on the estate, and Fiona brings him his meals). It is clear that David, a decent if unromantic sort, also has suffered some mental imbalance from his poisoning, and in one episode he loses his temper with Fiona and strikes her.

Perhaps it is David’s dismay over this episode that causes him to attempt suicide by climbing Cadair Idris, drinking a vast quantity of alcohol and passing out on the side of the mountain where exposure to the elements would mean a certain death. Ironically, the man who saves David’s life is the one man who is the most equivocal about saving him; Alec, encountering David’s near-lifeless body on his way down the mountain after scattering the ashes, has already become his wife’s enthusiastic lover.

This three-way dilemma is complicated by subsequent events, as Fiona and Alec ponder questions of love, honor and duty.

North, a former ghostwriter for Bill Clinton, Al Gore and Mount Everest pioneer Jim Whittaker who divides his time between Seattle and Great Britain, is not at his best in writing dialogue (some of the exchanges are too arch and coy). But he is great at creating a sense of place (the climbing scenes are particularly well done). “The Long Walk Home” movingly conveys the life-changing effects of love between two middle-age people with a lot of unshared history.

Melinda Bargreen is the classical-music critic

for The Seattle Times.