'The Ferryman and His Wife' - by Frode Grytten

While walking the Chester Valley Trail (3 miles) we will discuss The Ferryman and His Wife by Frode Grytten (fiction, 176 pages, 4.5 hrs audio).

Park at the Penn Medicine Valley Forge parking lot, 1001 Chesterbrook Blvd, Berwyn, PA. Meet at the trailhead. In the event of rain, we will meet at the trailhead, and then decide on moving indoors.

Reach out to me if you have issues getting the audiobook version.

In the spirit of Amor Towles and George Saunders, the renowned, bestselling Norwegian author Frode Grytten takes readers on a quietly epic journey: ferry driver Nils Vik’s last route along the fjord, on what he knows will be his last day alive.

Nils Vik wakes up on November the 18th and knows it will be the day he dies. He follows his morning routine as voices from his past echo in his mind, and looks around the empty house one last time, before stepping onto his beloved boat.

His dog, dead these many years, leaps aboard with him, and then the other dead begin to emerge – from the woods along the fjord, from each of the ferry stops along the route, from his logbook full of memories and quotations and jotted-down notes about the weather conditions. The people from the past accompany him now, prodding him, showing him what he might have missed before, as he waits for his Marta, his late, remarkable wife, to finally join him on the boat again.