Why a Booktrail?
1965, 1989: A man. A woman. The heat of an Iowa summer. And the brief encounter whose passion will last a lifetime.
The Bridges Of Madison County
What you need to know before your trail
Francesca is a lonely italian woman living with her family in Iowa. One day when they are away at a trade fair, a National Geographic photographer stops by her farmhouse to ask for directions to a local bridge. He is in the area to put together a book, a photographic essay of the covered bridges of Madison County.
With her family away for four days, she gets to know this man very well and they fall in love.
Travel Guide
A dashing photographer from the National Geographic comes to Iowa in the search for the famous covered bridges and ends up finding something he never thought he would. He travels across the remote roads and the desolate landscape along dust roads with nothing but his radio for company. When he spots a lone farmhouse, he decides to ask for directions. He’s looking for the Roseman bridge and wants to find it before the light fades.
The bridges he finds are extremely ornate and colourful with roofs, often painted red and made from carved wood. They are just as sturdy as some of the houses out here. Francesca’s house was actually a old farm house which was renovated for the film, and is typical of the time and place – wooden houses with porches all around, screen shield doors and wooden furniture – a homely feel and a good size family home surrounded by farmland and not much else.
Francesca is lonely out there and as her family are away at a market for a few days, this unexpected visitor is a breath of fresh air. Together they discover the area and the bridges. Francesca is his guide and she opens up his eyes to the local area and some great opportunities for photographs for the magazine. He in turn shows her a new world she has only dreamed of.
The bridges and remote landscape are peaceful and flat. Roads stretch for miles and houses are few and far between. Light here changes over the covered bridges and so is the perfect place for photographs. This is not Francesca’s native home – she is from Italy – and it’s this sense of belonging and not belonging at the same time which is the overriding thought in the book. Robert is used to getting on and off a train or out of a car wherever he feels like it. He is a nomad in every sense of the word. Where does a person really belong to? Where you lay your hat or where your heart lies?
Booktrailer Review
Susan: @thebooktrailer
I remember reading this book for 2 reasons: I had just seen the film and I had been in France at the time so I had watched it in French. I came out wanting to go there to see the beautiful countryside and the bridges and of course to meet the main character in the novel: Francesca.
When I got the chance to go there, I remember seeing it and believing that because of the book , I had already been there before.I ended up compiling my own photographic essay of my trip, sadly before the age of digital cameras, and I also managed to find and photograph ‘Francesca’s’ house which is a private farm house that was done up especially for the film.For those of you who have read the book and remember the emotions and anguishm particularly Francesca faces, you will understand how I almost shed a little tear myself as I stood on that bridge.
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