A Walk to Remember
By NICHOLAS SPARKS

Prologue
When I was seventeen, my life changed forever.
I know that there are people who wonder about 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 I've lived here for most of my life, I don't
feel that I have to unless it's on my terms, and that would
take more time than most people are willing to give me. My
story can't be summed up in two or three sentences; it can't
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 question. 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. I'm 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 back 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, accepting 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. I zip my jacket just a
little. The temperature is cool, though I know it's 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 coming 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 else's eyes, I watch
myself grow younger; I see my hair changing from gray to
brown, I feel the wrinkles around my eyes begin to smooth, my
arms and legs grow sinewy. Lessons I've 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 people, looking in
windows as they pass Sweeney's bakery and Palka's 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 name is Landon Carter, and I'm seventeen years
old.
This is my story; I promise to leave nothing out.
First you will smile, and then you will cry-don't say you
hav...

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