The Bridges of Madison County

This is a short book of fiction whose main character I remember by name decades after first reading it: Robert Kincaid, a photographer, a traveler, going it alone.

I’ve thought back on this book while discovering, first-hand, that all sorts of great loves don’t always end in the happy-ever-after we might wish for. But we’ve been blessed to have experienced them nonetheless. His was a haunting dedication: "For the peregrines."

There are twenty-six letters in the alphabet and infinite ways to combine them, to portray every emotion a human experiences.

The overarching sentiment I appreciate after reading this book is that the beauty of romance can’t be fully captured with inky black symbols, even if arranged perfectly. You can get close, but true love is something that is felt.

In countless places, my heart was torn apart and healed, all inside a single sentence. This paradox and roller coaster of emotions encapsulates the rapturous essence of love.

We need more of the unnamed sentiments in this book to pour into… show more.

As a child I watched my parents’ marriage collapse, my mother exhausted by an often solo task of raising children and managing an active farm, while my father charged into his work as a part-time farmer and full-time oil well driller.

Years later, when I read The Bridges of Madison County it felt like part of my mom had been transported into its pages, as the neglected Francesca. It helped me better understand her, as well as the often rumor-ridden atmosphere of rural communities.

It also aided me in coming to terms with the fracturing of my own family, as… show more.

The style of this book was inviting. This lonely lady with a mundane life finds excitement in an affair that is brief. Also the fact that her children were surprised to discover what happened after her death is touching. I consider it a different way to tell a tale and to make it believable.

A WW2 war bride living on a remote farm, whose husband is away for a few days, falls for a photographer who is shooting images of covered bridges, and they embark on a highly emotion-charged affair. I wept and wept as I read this book, unable to put it down until I’d finished, and absolutely traumatised by the raw, powerful, poignancy of the prose. In its simplest terms, it’s a standard love story of star-crossed lovers, but so beautifully rendered that it feels as if it’s the first time you’ve ever read such a heart-wrenching tale.