The bridges of Madison county door Robert James Waller

The Bridges Of Madison County, Robert JamesWaller:

Robert Kincaid, fifty-two, is a photographer for the National Geographic. He has worked for them in many places across the world, but in August of 1965 he is sent into rural Iowa. There are several special covered bridges in a certain out-of-the-way district of Iowa, called Madison County, which they want Kincaid to do a photographic report on. And so Robert Kincaid throws his cameras, some clothes and his guitar in the back of his old pickup truck (which he calls ‘Harry’), and after a long trip he arrives in Iowa.
The first six bridges are easy to find, but he can’t find the seventh, called the Roseman Bridge. When he turns up the driveway of a farmhouse, Kincaid finds himself face to face with the farmer’s wife, a beautiful dark-haired woman. Her name is Francesca Johnson and she ’s forty-five years old, married to Richard Johnson, a cattle farmer. Francesca and he married and they have two children, Carolyn and Michael. Richard and the children are spending the week at the Illinois State Fair, where Richard is exhibiting a prize steer ‘that received more attention than she did’.
Francesca and Robert feel immediately strongly attracted to one another. She would not normally have gone with a stranger, but under these circumstances she decides to get in Kincaid’s truck to show him the way to Roseman Bridge. While Kincaid examines the bridge Francesca examines him, fascinated and intrigued. Back at the farm they drink tea, talk and smoke cigarettes.
Francesca invites Kincaid to stay for dinner. They drink a couple of beers, have dinner and talk until the early hours of the morning.
Early next day Kincaid is back at the bridge, shooting rolls and rolls of film. At one point he notices a piece of paper pinned to the bridge. It turns to an invitation from Francesca to have dinner with her again that day. This second dinner is very romantic and during this, their conversations become more personal. They dance on the music of the radio. Later they make love. After years of emotional and sexual starvation Francesca now finds that she is losing herself.
The next four days they only make love and they make lots of pleasure. They discuss plans to run away, but although it will break her heart, Francesca can’t do this. She can’t give up her responsibilities and if she leave it would turn her into something other than the woman Kincaid have come to love.
On the morning of the day that Richard and the children are coming back from the fair, Kincaid leaves. Francesca will live with the memory of those days for the rest of her life. After Richard’s dead in 1979, she tries to find Robert, but she can’t.
In 1982 she receives a package from a lawyer, containing a letter from ‘the last cowboy’ (as Kincaid calls himself) and a medallion inscribed with her name which he had worn ever since the end of their affair. After Francesca’s death in 1989 Michael and Carolyn discover a letter from their mother in which she reveals to them her secret love affair.
They want to do something with this wonderful story and so they ask a writer to work this story out.