A Walk to Remember

Landon, who is growing up in Beaufort, a small, church-going North Carolina town, hails from an infamously prominent family. His grandfather, “a true bastard if there ever was one” (11), made the family fortune through illegal sales of rum during the Prohibition era and then in his banking business, Carter Banking and Loan, which charged wildly unfair interest rates during the worst period of the Depression. Landon’s father, Worth Carter, who is a Congressman and part of the government department that cracks down on alleged Communist activities, is a “bigwig” in town, though largely absent from Landon’s life given that he lives in Washington D.C. nine months of the year. Lacking a “manly influence,” Landon is a mildly rebellious teen, soaping up car windows and eating peanuts in graveyards at night.

Landon is aware that the local Baptist minister, Hegbert Sullivan, who used to work for his grandfather before he answered his religious calling, disapproves of the Carter family. Landon feels that widowed Hegbert is an eccentric religious zealot and finds his daughter, Jamie, a Bible-reading do-gooder who’s too “plain” to attract his notice. However, when Landon elects to take the drama class, which is rehearsing a play called The Christmas Angel—based on Hegbert’s personal experience of losing a wife and raising a daughter alone—Jamie, who is cast as the Angel, seems “almost pretty” (20). When she smiles at him, he does not yet know the reason.

On a rare visit home, Landon’s father convinces him to run for student president, to increase his chances of attending the University of Carolina, Chapel Hill. When Landon gets elected, he is then faced with the problem of finding a date for the homecoming dance. When all of the girls he finds attractive have already found dates, his only choice is to ask Jamie. Worrying that the student council treasurer Carey Dennison will ask her first, Landon hurries over to her house after school. He nervously asks her to the dance with him. Jamie, who has never before attended a school dance, consents “‘on one condition”‘(33)—that he does not fall in love with her (33). Landon, who notices Jamie laugh, is aware that she is joking and admires her “pretty good sense of humor” (33).

Landon picks Jamie up half an hour early because Hegbert wants to talk to him. The meeting is awkward when Hegbert inquires why Landon asked Jamie to the dance. Landon replies, “‘I needed someone to go with, and I asked her”‘(37). On the way to the dance, Jamie confirms that her father does not like Landon; however, she thinks that their going together “‘was in the Lord’s plan somehow”‘(39).

Jamie has a great time at the dance, and the pair have “what resembled an ordinary conversation” (40), albeit one that is peppered with Jamie’s religious pronouncements. However, when Landon’s ex-girlfriend Angela shows up with her new boyfriend, Lev, Lev accuses Landon of staring at Angela and becomes aggressive.  Jamie, however, intervenes, saying that she knows Lev’s grandmother. Lev gets confused by this interruption and walks away.

When Lev abandons a drunk, sick Angela at the dance, Jamie and Landon clean up the vomit and help her home. At the end of the evening, despite being “covered in puke,”Jamie attests that she has had a good time.

In the weeks after the homecoming dance, Landon’s friend, Eric, teases him about liking Jamie. Landon defensively attests that he does not have feelings for her, both to Eric and to himself.

The next day, Jamie calls Landon and asks him to come over—she has something important to tell him. When he arrives, Jamie begs him to play the male lead of Tom Thornton in the play their drama class is rehearsing, The Christmas Angel. The current male lead, Eddie Jones, is an unattractive beanpole with a stutter, and Jamie wants the play to be a success for her father’s sake. According to Jamie, Landon is the only eligible male lead.

Landon does not want to act because he worries about what his friends would say if they knew he had to spend every afternoon in rehearsals with Jamie. However, he agrees when he sees “the tears in her eyes” (55).

Landon auditions before the drama teacher, Miss Garber, and gets the part. He also finds that his “noble feelings” (59) in agreeing to help Jamie out wear off when he is teased by his friends. Rumors spread around the school that Jamie and Landon are dating.

One evening, when Landon is out with his friends, Jamie approaches them. To the delight and hilarity of his friends, Jamie calls Landon “‘a real gentleman”‘ (63) for volunteering to help out with the play. Eric jokes that Landon wants to perform with Jamie at the orphanage where she volunteers. Landon, unable to go back on his promise to help, spends the next day in rehearsal but decides that he does not want to “look like an idiot” if he has to perform “for a bunch of orphans” (65).