Occupation: Retired library assistant
I still can’t believe I’m here in Mum’s England. Home of the Bard, Jane Austen, the Brontë sisters, Morse, and Downton Abbey. A dream that’s been a long-time coming. At seventy years old, I realized it was now or never. So, I packed a suitcase and Mum’s ashes, pushed down my fear of flying, left Las Vegas, and jetted across the ocean on a giant tin can crowded with teeming humanity, grateful for my noise-canceling headphones and a good book.
After we landed safely (thank God), I took the coach to Oxford, found a quiet B&B, had fish and chips and yummy mushy peas for dinner and slept off my jet lag. Yesterday, I visited the Bodleian Library, where I stared gobsmacked, at the 500-year-old books that had been historically chained to the shelves so they could never leave the premises. As a former library worker, I was in hog heaven.
People call me an “odd duck” due to my sensory issues and because books are my best friends. What can I say: libraries and bookstores are my favorite places on earth. Today I’m taking the C.S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien walking tour, then I’ll have lunch at The Eagle and Child, and return to Blackwell’s, the nineteenth-century bookshop with miles of shelving a stone’s throw from the Bodleian.
I laced up my sturdy walking shoes, made my bed, and went downstairs to the dining room. I chose a table for two in the corner and opened 84 Charing Cross, the book I’d bought yesterday, hoping the other guests would get the message and avoid me.
“All right love?” The B&B owner appeared, teapot in hand. “Would you like a cuppa?”
“Yorkshire Gold?”
She nodded, remembering my request from yesterday.
“Yes, please.”
“Would you like a full English fry up, or just toast?”
“I’ll take the fry up today with scrambled eggs please.” Adding milk and sugar to my tea. I took a long drink. So much better than coffee, which I can’t abide. Then I returned to the letters between New Yorker Helene Hanff and London used-book dealer Frank Doel, captivated by their twenty-year correspondence.
“Here you are, love.” The B&B owner set a heaping plate before me. “Enjoy.”
I ate with gusto, especially loving the delicious English bacon and fried tomato. Then I bit into the sausage and my mouth revolted. Discreetly, I spit the sausage into my napkin and gulped down my tea to rid my mouth of the squishy texture. Ugh.
To cleanse my palate, I pulled out my itinerary. Tomorrow, I’ll rent a car and drive on the wrong side of the road to Stratford-on-Avon to see Hamlet at the Globe Theatre. A dream come true. My pulse quickened with anticipation. And then . . . I’ll head at last to Hay-on-Wye, the legendary Welsh “Town of Books,” the largest secondhand and antiquarian book center in the world and the reason for my literary pilgrimage.
Heaven.
THE PILGRIMAGE OF PRIMROSE HONEYCHURCH
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Release: October 2026
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | Bookshop
From the author of Death of a Flying Nightingale comes the moving story of a solitary seventy-year-old curmudgeon embracing the connection of family and daring to follow her dreams.
Primrose Honeychurch doesn’t really “get” people. Books, though, make perfect sense.
At seventy, the sharp-tongued recluse prefers to keep company with her own routines. But when a life-altering diagnosis leaves her worried she’ll never be missed, she decides it’s finally time to do something to leave her mark: something no one will ever forget.
Clutching her mother’s ashes and the book of her heart, Primrose hops on a plane, bound for Hay-on-Wye, the legendary Welsh “Town of Books.” Unfortunately, her literary pilgrimage just won’t follow the plot. After an accident derails her trip, she finds herself staying awhile with estranged family. But she senses a kindred spirit in the niece she’s getting to know, who uncannily understands the world much the same as Primrose herself does.
As rolling green hills and book-lined streets frame an unexpected season of discovery, what began as an unwelcome detour becomes something more profound. For the first time in her life, Primrose begins to glimpse the beauty―and courage―of true human connection.
About the author
Laura Jensen Walker (laurajensenwalker.com) is the award-winning author of more than twenty-five books, including the Lefty-nominated Death of a Flying Nightingale, and the Amazon-bestselling, Agatha Award-nominated Murder Most Sweet. Laura, a genre butterfly who writes in several genres, is a rabid Anglophile since being stationed in the UK with the Air Force. She lives in Northern California with her family—including two rescue pups—where she drinks tea and dreams of England.