Robert Kincaid, again

Books are like memories, connected in explicable ways. You start on one, go on to another and before you know you have reached somewhere far away from where you started, a place where you would never even have thought of or imagined.

A picture of three frogs perched one on another took me on a search for an old family photo where the spawns were perched on the man in the same style. That journey brought me to this picture, and my immediate reaction was one of total disbelief. How could I, a die hard fan of Francesca Johnson and Robert Kincaid, not have known about this? Obviously, this was a book I’d either seen somewhere or was in my possession. If I’d had it, why hadn’t I ever read it? Or of all strange things, having read it, had I completely forgotten about it? But how could I forget what happened to two of my all time favorite characters? Anyway, the time had come and I had to read or was it retreading?

Connections never stop, does it? After a long rut, I had picked up a few books of fiction this week. One was ‘The Midnight Library’ by Matt Haig. About regrets, possibilities of other lives, what ifs and what could have been. Serendipity again, but then such surprises in life has become the norm for me. Another book on the several possibilities along life’s strange journeys.

Ten years have passed since Robert Kincaid has gone in search of the covered Bridges of Madison County and found Francesca. There is not a day when he hasn’t thought of her or relived that night in her kitchen. Does she even think of him , he wonders. How different his life would have been , if she had decided otherwise. But he knew they were inextricably connected to each other, even if they never met again.

^{“One great love in one dancing moment when the wind had come around to his back and the universe hesitated in whatever the universe was up to. One dancing moment when the old traveler saw the fires of home, when the trains came to rest and their whistles turned silent. When his circling around Rilke’s ancient tower had ceased for a time.}“

He had thought of returning several times over the last few years and he knew he had to visit Roseman Bridge one last time. In another part of the country, Wynn Macmillan, a free spirit of a woman sometimes thinks of the man on the bike that she had met at Big Sur almost forty years ago. A moment in time as if it was predestined, the man long forgotten but the memories that he left, she could never forget.

Francesca meanwhile is at the same place, even after her husband had passed on. There is nothing that really holds her there except for the hope that her one true love might come looking for her again. This time she is sure what she would do. Yes, Robert does get to Roseman Bridge and we know they do not meet. However, on his way back he does meet Wynn.

Things seldom happen by chance. A time and place for everything and everyone. Robert Kincaid finally comes to know he was never really as alone as he had believed himself to be.

Robert James Waller’s writing is as endearingly romantic as ever. But then, as in life, in books too, it is nearly impossible to have more than one great romance. There is not much of Francesca here, and Wynn is a fleeting spirit, though you get to catch her now and then. What we see in her is a kindred spirit, one that takes life as it comes. The surprise element is her son, Carlisle Macmillan.

I am not sure whether I would have read it through if it was not for the previous story. The curiosity to know what happens in the end is what kept me through. And of course, the beautiful writing that peeps in and out, now and then.

By the way, Robert Kincaid had been to India as well, the Periyar Lake, no less. So go ahead, pick it up. After all, how can one have enough of the peregrine soul that is Robert Kincaid?