A+Walk+to+Remember+-+Summary

​ The story is told in first person from Landon Carter’s point of view when he was 17 years old. It is told in the past tense, as though Landon is telling the story many years later. The prologue does tell us this; Landon is now 57 years old, but he still remembers what happened that year very clearly. He promises that “first you will smile, and then you will cry-don’t say you haven’t been warned.”

The setting is 1958, Beaufort, North Carolina. Landon starts out by introducing the town as one where “people waved from their cars whenever they saw someone on the street whether they knew him or not, and the air smelled of pine, salt, and sea.” He goes on to explain how the town is very religious, but not united under one religion. This prompts him to introduce Hegbert.

Hegbert Sullivan is the minister at the Southern Baptist Church in town. He’d been with the church “since Moses parted the Red Sea” according to Landon. He mentions that Hegbert wrote a play some years back after his wife died entitled “The Christmas Angel,” and that it is performed every year by high school seniors because Hegbert wants them to be involved in something positive before they graduate. He brings up the fact that Hegbert has a daughter named Jamie, and says “More on her later.”

Landon tells us some background information on his family. Basically, his father is a Congressman and isn’t around much, and they are pretty wealthy because of Landon’s grandfather.

Landon says that he didn’t want to take Theatre his senior year, but he ended up having to. The class was full of girls besides him, and when he walked in Miss Garber, the teacher, was talking about how Jamie Sullivan was going to be the Christmas Angel in the play. Landon says that Jamie was a nice girl: almost too nice. She wore a brown sweater, a skirt, and her hair pulled up every day, which made her the “weird” girl. She didn’t really have friends; she spent a lot of her time reading the Bible, helping out at the orphanage, doing charity work, and taking wounded animals to the vet. All the adults in town loved her, which meant some resentment from other kids her age.

School elections are coming up, and Landon’s father tells him that he wants him to run for president. Landon does, and wins, but this means that he has to go to the Homecoming Dance. He didn’t have a date, and he started getting desperate, so he decided to go ask Jamie. She told him that she would go with him on one condition. “You have to promise that you won’t fall in love with me,” she said, and Landon promised. The dance did not go well. Landon’s ex-girlfriend, Angela, and her boyfriend Lew were there, and Lew spiked the punch bowl. Angela drank a bit too much, and ended up sick in the bathroom. Jamie went in there, and when she saw Angela like that, she decided to help her. Landon and Jamie both end up cleaning her up, and taking her home.

Landon didn’t hear from Jamie again until she called his house a couple weeks later. She asked him if he could stop by her house; there was something she wanted to talk to him about. He was very surprised, but decided he would go. It turned out that she wanted to ask him if he would play Tom in the Christmas play, the major male role. He tried to get out of it, but there really wasn’t anyone else to do it, and Jamie told him that she really wanted it to be special for her father. He gives in, and says he’ll do it.

One day on their way to the orphanage, Jamie and Landon end up talking about what their futures. Landon tells her he wants to go to college at UNC, but he doesn’t know what he wants to be yet. He asks her what she wants. She says that all she wants to get married; she wants her father to walk her down the aisle and she wants the church bursting with people. Landon finds that a bit odd, but he doesn’t push her further on the issue. He asks her about college, and she says she doesn’t think she’s going to go. She even tells him about how the Bible she carries around is the only thing she has left of her mother.

The night before the play, Landon was walking Jamie home again and he was in a bad mood. He ended up yelling at her, telling her that he wished he’d never agreed to do the play. He ended up feeling angrier at himself for yelling at her than he was before because she was so nice to him anyway. He goes and apologizes to her before the play starts, and he tells her he’ll make it up to her.

The play goes very well, and Landon is stunned to see Jamie dressed in her angel costume. His line was, “You’re beautiful,” and for the first time, he nailed that line because he really meant it. After the play is over, she tells him that he can go around and collect jars she’s put out for donations to the orphanage to make it up to her. When he got all the cans and totaled the money up, he realized there was only about $55. He knew that wasn’t enough to buy Christmas presents for the orphans, so he added his savings of about $150 to the jars and decided not to tell her. She was so excited she cried, and Landon felt good about himself for the first time in a long time.

She bought presents for all the orphans, and asked Landon to come help her hand them out. He agrees, and buys her a new sweater for Christmas too. When they’re sitting under the Christmas tree, she tells him that she knows it was him that put that much money in, and gives him her mother’s Bible as her Christmas present to him. On the ride home, they hold hands, and Landon asked her to come to his house for Christmas dinner the next day. After dinner, they walk around the garden and talk, and this is when Landon realizes he’s falling for her.

He takes her home, and her father isn’t there so she tells him that they can talk on the porch if he wants. He leans forward and kisses her, and he knows that he’s broken his promise. On New Year’s Eve, he takes her out to dinner and they dance and have a good time. They start spending even more time together, but Landon starts to suspect that something is wrong with her. He tells her that he loves her one night, and she leans into him and starts to cry. She tells him that he can’t love her because she’s dying of leukemia. She didn’t know how long she had left, and there wasn’t anything the doctors could do for her. She hadn’t told anyone because she didn’t want pity from people for the last bit of her life.

She stops going to school soon, as she becomes sicker and sicker. She has to go into the hospital, and Landon feels helpless. They start reading the Bible together whenever they can. Landon still feels like there’s something else he can do for her, but he doesn’t know what it is. As soon as she is healthy enough to go outside, he asks her to come with him, and they watch the sunset over the ocean.

Landon’s father finds out what’s going on, and pays for a home nurse and all the equipment for Jamie to stay at home, which is what she really wants. Finally, Landon realizes that there is something else that he can do for her. He goes to Reverend Sullivan and asks for permission to marry his daughter. He went back to Jamie’s, and asked for her hand in marriage. Jamie said yes.

The last thing that happened before Jamie died was all she wanted; she had her wedding where her father officiated, and the church was packed with everyone she knew. Landon says that he now believes that miracles can happen.