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1、A Walk to RememberNICHOLAS SPARKSCONTENTS:PROLOGUECHAPTER ONECHAPTER TWOCHAPTER THREECHAPTER FOURCHAPTER FIVECHAPTER SIXCHAPTER SEVENCHAPTER EIGHTCHAPTER NINECHAPTER TENCHAPTER ELEVENCHAPTER TWELVECHAPTER THIRTEENPrologue When I was seventeen, my life changed forever. I know that there are people wh
2、o wonder abou t me when I say this. They look at me strangely as if trying to fathom what could have happened back then, though I seldom bother to explain. Because Ive lived here for most of my life, I dont feel that I have to unless its on my terms, and that would take more time than most people ar
3、e willing to give me. My story cant be summed up in two or three sentences; it cant be packaged into something neat and simple that people would immediately understand. Despite the passage of forty years, the people still living here who knew me that year accept my lack of explanation without questi
4、on. My story in some ways is their story because it was something that all of us lived through. It was I, however, who was closest to it. Im fifty-seven years old, but even now I can remember everything from that year, down to the smallest details. I relive that year often in my mind, bringing it ba
5、ck to life, and I realize that when I do, I always feel a strange combination of sadness and joy. There are moments when I wish I could roll back the clock and take all the sadness away, but I have the feeling that if I did, the joy would be gone as well. So I take the memories as they come, accepti
6、ng them all, letting them guide me whenever I can. This happens more often than I let on. It is April 12, in the last year before the millennium, and as I leave my house, I glance around. The sky is overcast and gray, but as I move down the street, I notice that the dogwoods and azaleas are blooming
7、. I zip my jacket just a little. The temperature is cool, though I know its only a matter of weeks before it will settle in to something comfortable and the gray skies give way to the kind of days that make North Carolina one of the most beautiful places in the world. With a sigh, I feel it all comi
8、ng back to me. I close my eyes and the years begin to move in reverse, slowly ticking backward, like the hands of a clock rotating in the wrong direction. As if through someone elses eyes, I watch myself grow younger; I see my hair changing from gray to brown, I feel the wrinkles around my eyes begi
9、n to smooth, my arms and legs grow sinewy. Lessons Ive learned with age grow dimmer, and my innocence returns as that eventful year approaches. Then, like me, the world begins to change: roads narrow and some become gravel, suburban sprawl has been replaced with farmland, downtown streets teem with
10、people, looking in windows as they pass Sweeneys bakery and Palkas meat shop. Men wear hats, women wear dresses. At the courthouse up the street, the bell tower rings. . . . I open my eyes and pause. I am standing outside the Baptist church, and when I stare at the gable, I know exactly who I am. My
11、 name is Landon Carter, and Im seventeen years old. This is my story; I promise to leave nothing out. First you will smile, and then you will cry-dont say you havent been warned. Chapter 1 In 1958, Beaufort, North Carolina, which is located on the coast near Morehead City, was a place like many othe
12、r small southern towns. It was the kind of place where the humidity rose so high in the summer that walking out to get the mail made a person feel as if he needed a shower, and kids walked around barefoot from April through October beneath oak trees draped in Spanish moss. People waved from their ca
13、rs whenever they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not, and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea, a scent unique to the Carolinas. For many of the people there, fishing in the Pamlico Sound or crabbing in the Neuse River was a way of life, and boats were moored wherever you saw th
14、e Intracoastal Waterway. Only three channels came in on the television, though television was never important to those of us who grew up there. Instead our lives were centered around the churches, of which there were eighteen within the town limits alone. They went by names like the Fellowship Hall
15、Christian Church, the Church of the Forgiven People, the Church of Sunday Atonement, and then, of course, there were the Baptist churches. When I was growing up, it was far and away the most popular denomination around, and there were Baptist churches on practically every corner of town, though each
16、 considered itself superior to the others. There were Baptist churches of every type-Freewill Baptists, Southern Baptists, Congregational Baptists, Missionary Baptists, Independent Baptists . . . well, you get the picture. Back then, the big event of the year was sponsored by the Baptist church downtown-Southern, if you really want to know-in conjunction with the local high school. Every year they put on
