The
Bridges of Madison County is a romantic novel written by Robert James Waller. It is moving and haunting, a
beautiful
love story. It is so compelling that one can't help reading it over to relish a powerful and deep emotion within the story and the telling.
The novel is about a brief love affair between a man and a woman, two unlikely characters – Francesca Johnson, a 45-year-old wife of a farmer from Iowa, and Robert Kincaid, a 52-year-old photographer from National Geographic, in Washington. In their own respective worlds, they are content and happy enough.
One day, it all happened when Kincaid drives through that part of Iowa, Francesca's own small world. Together they ignite an incredibly deep and spiritual passion that grows over the following years of separation. Their story is all the more heart-rending and poignant because it is based on letters and journals discovered only after both of them pass away. It is in the the
bridges of Madison County that the love affair of Francesca and Robert develops and deepens into something rare and brilliantly
beautiful.
Francesca's children, deeply touched by their mother's love affair with Robert, strongly believes that such beautiful affection and "remarkable tale was worth the telling."
The Bridges of Madison County is well-written and reads like poetry. It touches all the senses, and moves the reader by its power of love.