The Bridges of Madison County by Robert James Waller

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An Overview

Robert Waller writes The Bridges of Madison County with such heartfelt sincerity, and begins the book so seriously—so convincingly—that I believed this story was true. So much so that I actually planned to do a story on Robert Kincaid, the National Geographic photographer in the book. I hunted for information on him until someone informed me that he was just Waller’s wonderful and mysterious character—not a real photographer at all!

Main Body:

However, this realization didn’t ruin the story for me one bit. I loved the story and loved the writing. It is an unusually explicit story of a human predicament that happens only rarely—and changes life forever.

The unusual angle Waller used to tell the story was very clever. As I said, I believed the story was true. He begins with letting the reader in on how the story supposedly came to the narrator—who is supposedly a real journalist. The journalist very articulately reveals the way he got the story, and then begins the tale.

By now, you are convinced of its validity, which enhances this work of fiction, which comes very much alive in the reader’s mind. Take a drifter, more or less. Not a worthless hobo type, but an intelligent worthy artist type. He is a loner with keen sensibilities—a romantic. Get him lost in the corn fields of Iowa—a rolling, rural, mid-western US state—driving hopelessly down one dirt road after another in search of an old covered bridge.

Then add a dreamer of the opposite sex, and of the same sensibilities. Take a woman who, years ago, banked her hopes and ambitions on a marriage to a soldier and a move from war-torn Europe to America. This woman dreamed of experiencing the good life. One of fun and romance, music and dancing, of art, poetry, higher education, pretty clothes and fine food.

Take this woman and plant her in a farmhouse out among those dirt roads and cornfields. See her with her apron on, shooing chickens, feeding two children, and being married to a man she feels love and respect for, and yet can best describe as “clean.”

When these two romantics meet, Robert Kincaid, photographer, and lonely, displaced Francesca Johnson, farmer’s wife, a fairy tale begins. In the few short days that they have, the love of the century occurs. And Waller writes about it with lyrical prose that pulls every agony and ecstasy of two hearts in need to the surface for the reader to see.

In five short days, an impossible love of a lifetime is born and matures. But, alas, reality is still there, starkly demanding to be dealt with, as time runs out and the lovers frantically try to grasp at their options—while responsibility clings to them like a wet sheet and claws away at the dream.

I put Waller in the league of D.H. Lawrence when it comes to his depth of understanding the female heart. Rare is the male who can pull this off!

The Narration:

The author reads this book himself. He knows the material, of course, but he speaks much too fast and the words are often unclear. He seems to have a bit of trouble with some pronunciations—you hear him. kind of stumbling over his tongue.

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