Harold Fry, 65, has cut the lawn outside his home at Kingsbridge
on the south coast of Devon when he receives a letter. A colleague
of twenty years ago, Queenie Hennessy, has cancer and is in a
hospice in Berwick-upon-Tweed. The doctors say there is nothing
more that can be done for her. He writes her a feeble and brief
note and goes to post it, has second thoughts, and walks to the
next post box, and the next. He phones the hospice from a call box
and leaves a message. He is coming and she should wait, stay alive
while he makes the journey. A girl at the petrol filling station
where he stops for a snack says something that acts as a catalyst
for his nascent project. He tells her he is on foot, posting a
letter to someone with cancer. "If you have faith you can do anything"
she replies, but quickly disclaims any religious reference.
As he begins the walk which in 87 days will cover 627 miles, he reflects.
About his marriage, his former employment as a brewery representative,
about his son David, from whom he is almost completely estranged.
From stopping places he sends postcards, to his wife Maureen, to Queenie,
and to the unnamed girl at the filling station who gave him inspiration for his journey.
Maureen, although anxious about him, for a long time doesn't think of
driving to provide help. Much later, when he has reached Yorkshire she
drives up to see him. She thinks of joining his pilgrimage, but when he
invites her she refuses, saying "It was selfish of me to ask you to give
up your walk. Forgive me, Harold", to which replies, "I'm the one who needs forgiveness".
Harold also realises that his journey to Queenie Hennesy is also a way for him
to resolve issues from his past and to listen to the problems of others, such as
a "silver-haired gentleman" whom he meets in a cafe early in his journey, or a
middle-aged woman with cuts on her wrists.
He remembers how when he was twelve his mother 'walked out', and is aware that
he is repeating her action. When he was sixteen his father 'showed him the door'.
Later he went mad.
Six miles south of Stroud he phones the hospice and is told that the stay, cure,
or miracle is working. His decision to walk appears vindicated. He finds a cast-off
sleeping bag and carries it with another bag, looking now every bit a gentleman of
the road. Faced with a shrunken bank balance he starts to sleep out. In Cheltenham
he gives away his guidebook and posts home his debit card and other items. In the
renunciation is the wonder of the impossible.
South of Coventry he is joined by a young man, Mick, who remarks, "What you’re
doing is a pilgrimage for the twenty-first century. It's awesome. Yours is the
kind of story people want to hear". Mick, it appears, works for the Coventry Telegraph,
and Harold's story of modern pilgrimage was soon everywhere, including Thought
for the Day on BBC Radio 4. Before long they are joined by countless others from
all walks of life. They do not use paid accommodation, always sleeping out or finding garden sheds.
There are disagreements, thefts, and soon Harold is thinking, "if only these people
would go. Would find something else to believe in". He decides to backtrack,
which has the effect of throwing off the fellow-travellers who proceed directly to
the Berwick destination. In the last stages of his walk Harold becomes badly disorientated,
wanders around west of Berwick, sending home postcards from places like Kelso.
But when he at last reaches the hospice where Queenie has been waiting, he decides
not to go in, and the reader is told, by means of a confessional letter to the girl
at the filling station, of another motive for the walk. His son David, unemployed after
Cambridge and addicted to drink and drugs, committed suicide in the garden shed, where
he was discovered by the father with whom he barely ever communicated, and whose life
is now a protracted mourning. The same letter divulges that when he and Queenie were
working as colleagues she had taken the blame for a misdemeanour committed by Harold.
"I let her take the blame".
Finally, Harold changes his mind and goes to the sick room to find Queenie unable to
speak and at the point of death. Maureen reaches him in Berwick, and he tells her that
Queenie is beyond hope, beyond speech, and had been so since he set out. He however is
able to say things to Maureen that were previously unspoken, about memories of David,
of their earlier life, his own mother. They are reconciled before the waves breaking
on the beach. Together they visit the hospice where Queenie has died and learned that
she died at peace. When a young nun invites them to stay for evening mass they decline.
Later, they head to the waterfront and reminisce on how they first met and they laugh
for the first time in years.