In 1992 I began to write a novel I called Pilgrimage. I wrote the first draft of this book in longhand over the space of six months, in spiral notebooks I carried around with me everywhere. I wrote whenever I had even a few minutes – in doctors’ waiting rooms, in line at the grocery store, on hall duty at the school where I taught, in my classroom while my students were taking a test, and during faculty meetings. Sorry, Mr. Gaul.
In 1994, I took a writing trip to Hilton Head, South Carolina, to spend a week working on this project. I spent most of my time in my small timeshare condo, writing, pacing, and talking to myself about this book.
I did go to the beach – but only once. I rented a bicycle that I rode once a day to get food and fresh air. I didn’t watch television.
As I struggled with the outline and narrative for this book, I realized that I was writing it to begin the process of saying goodbye to my father, Lloyd C. Arnold, who was facing the challenges of Parkinson’s Disease. This terrible disease would take his life in 2001.
My parents provided the stimulus for this book. After my mother Vi Arnold retired in 1985, my parents had taken a six-week driving trip to visit places and people they had known throughout their lives. They visited friends and family in Texas, Arizona, California, and Illinois during their cross-country trip, and that’s what provided the template for the trip that the characters in this book take.
According to the dictionary, a pilgrimage is:
1. A journey of a pilgrim; especially, one to a shrine or a sacred place
2. The course of life on earth
The title of my book employs the word “pilgrimage” in both meanings. In the book, I recount the story of Rose and Lowell Adams as Rose retires from teaching and they prepare to visit friends and family. But Lowell dies suddenly the night before they are planning to leave on the trip. At first Rose decides (naturally) not to go; but after a couple of months, she changes her mind and decides to follow the original itinerary – and she asks her oldest daughter Ellie to go with her in place of her father. Ellie, whose life is at loose ends at this point, agrees to go with her mother.
As they travel the country and Ellie learns more about the lives her parents lived apart from her, she realizes that the more she learns about her father, the more she misses him. Some of what she learns is challenging, and she has to figure out how to combine new information with the image of her father she carried with her. By the end of the trip two months later, Rose and Ellie know each other better, they both understand Lowell better, and the two women have resolved some conflicts in their own lives to chart a path forward.
My characters are composites of friends and relatives, combined with a healthy dose of imagination; rest assured, if you see something in a character that reminds you of someone (even you!), the rest of that character’s traits, flaws, and foibles exist only for the purpose of this story.
I published a 250-page draft of this book through Lulu.com during the pandemic year (just for me, so I have a document to work from), and I think often about how to move forward with it. Its message is still meaningful to me, and I’m going to keep working on it.
Could this possibly be the book I would see you feverishly (and you know what I mean) working on in the halls of WSHS?
Wow. Impressive and worthwhile. We all need to do something like this. My uncle did and I could hear his voice so clearly as I read his memoir. It's a wonderful way to remember a person.