As someone who ascribes to lengthy walking escapades, I walk 7 miles each way to work. I could certainly identify with Ms. Boxfish's 10 mile trek through Manahattan. It is based on the copywriter, Margaret Fishback, who was, the "highest paid female advertising copywriter in the 1930's." The author, Kathleen Rooney obtained the archives of Ms. Fishback's work.
The author states, the book is a work of fiction and not a biography of Margaret Fishback. We meet Lillian Boxfish, an elderly woman, alone on New Year's eve in 1984. She decides to walk from her residence to her favorite restaurant, Grimaldi's and then to Macy's. Its a quirky, poetic pilgrimage as she meets many colorful characters, and reminisces with quotes memories, anecdotes, culture, art, marriage, family and a recipe along the way.
I would take a walk with Ms. Boxfish anytime and would be enthralled with the conversation. She is emphatic in her descriptions, but leaves room for a question, regarding any matter, she is currently discussing.
"I think I look alright. But who's to say? The insouciance of youth doesn't stay, but shades into eccentricity, as people say when they are trying to be kind, until finally you become just another lonely crackpot. But, I have always been this way. The strangeness just used to seem more fashionable, probably."
She ends, where she started, stating, "Now? The future and I are just about even, our quarrel all but resolved. I welcome its coming, and I resolve to be attentive to the details of its arrival. I plan to meet it at the station in my best white dress, violet corsage in hand. Waving as it comes into view, born toward the present on its road to anthracite."
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