The bridges of Madison county door Robert James Waller

About the Book

Title: The Bridges of Madison County

Writer: Robert James Waller

Title Explanation: Robert Kincaid goes to Iowa to make some photos of covered bridges in Madison County. There he meets Francesca Johnson.

Publisher: Wolters-Noordhoff.

Number of Pages: 112 pages.

Characters: There are two main characters in this story: Robert Kincaid and Francesca Johnson.

Robert Kincaid: Robert is a photographer for the magazine ‘National Geographic’. He is 52 years old, he is divorced. He is very intelligent but also very lonely.

Francesca Johnson: Francesca is a 45 year old housewife, she was born in Italy. She is married to Richard, has two children and she lives in Winterset, Iowa, USA. Although Francesca loves her children, she is very unhappy, because of the lack of excitement in her marriage.

Genre: A Love story.

Setting: The story takes place in Winterset, a little village in Madison County in Iowa, in less than a week in August 1965.
Summary: The story begins, when Francesca received a letter from Robert, she is thinking of the time, when she met him. After photographing six covered bridges and searching for another one, Robert drove through a little village, called Winterset, and he asked the way to the last bridge he needed to photograph. He asked it to Francesca, an unhappily married housewife. From the moment she saw him, she was in love with him. Instead of telling him how to drive to that place, she showed him the way to that bridge. After talking about some things, she invited him for dinner. Her husband and children were away for a week so she was all alone at home that week. After a long evening they said goodbye but Francesca wanted to see him more. So she left a note near the bridge that he was going to photograph. The result was a relationship between these two for a couple of days. After a few days they have to say goodbye to each other because her husband and children were coming home. Francesca loved Robert very much but she couldn't leave them although she wasn't happily married. She didn't say anything to her husband. After the death of her husband she tried to locate Robert but she couldn't find him. Several years later she received a packet from Robert: he had left her some stuff after his death. It remembered her to the time with him. A few years later she died also. She left a letter to her children to tell them about that time. She had not told them about this adventure but she couldn't take it with her in her grave. Her children understood it and they find it a terrific story. They go a writer and tell him the story.

About the Writer

Robert James Waller was born on 1 August, 1939 in Rockford, Iowa. He was an proffesor of economics, from 1968 until 1991 at the University of Northern Iowa, Cedar Falls. Waller is also known as an photographer and musician.
Several of his books have been on the New York Times bestseller list including 1992's "The Bridges of Madison County" which is the largest selling novel in history. It and his 1995 novel, "Puerto Vallarta Squeeze," have both been made into motion pictures. He currently lives in Texas.

My Opinion

I liked the story because it was an realistic love-story, because I really believed in the love between Robert and Francesca. And I liked it also because it was divert than other love-stories, it isn’t a sweet high school love-story , but a real romance between to middle aged persons, who have more history and can’t be together because of the choices they have made earlier in there live.