Let's Take the Long Way Home
A Memoir of Friendship
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Narrated by:
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Joyce Bean
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By:
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Gail Caldwell
About this listen
In Let's Take the Long Way Home, Pulitzer Prize-winning author Gail Caldwell offers a powerful and moving memoir about her coming-of-age in mid-life and her extraordinary friendship with Caroline Knapp, the author of Drinking: A Love Story.
In her younger years, Caldwell defined herself by rebellion and independence, a passion for books, and an aversion to intimacy and a distrust of others. Then, while living in Cambridge in her early 40s, Caldwell adopted a rambunctious puppy named Clementine. On one of their bucolic walks, she met Caroline and her dog, Lucille, and both women's lives changed forever.
Though they are more different than alike, these two fiercely private, independent women quickly relax into a friendship more profound than either of them expected, a friendship that will thrive on their shared secrets, including parallel struggles with alcoholism and loneliness. They grow increasingly inseparable until, in 2003, Caroline is diagnosed with Stage IV lung cancer.
In her signature exquisite prose, Caldwell mines the deepest levels of devotion and grief in this wise and affecting account about losing her best friend. Let's Take the Long Way Home is also a celebration of life and all the little moments worth cherishing - and affirms why Gail Caldwell is rightly praised as one of our bravest and most honest literary voices.
©2010 Gail Caldwell (P)2010 TantorListeners also enjoyed...
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Editorial reviews
Former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, Pulitzer Prize-winner Gail Caldwell's second foray into the terrain of memoir demonstrates once again that she is as capable of writing a book as she is of reading one. Instead of the Texas of her youth, this time Caldwell is firmly ensconced in the scenery of Cambridge, Massachusetts, where she regularly walks her Samoyed, Clemetine. Let's Take the Long Way Home is the story of her connection with the dog, but mainly her connection with a fellow canine enthusiast, Caroline Knapp, former columnist for the Boston Pheonix and author of the memoir Drinking: A Love Story, who died of cancer in 2002.
Narrating this touching testimony of the friendship between two stubborn ladies and their pets is Joyce Bean, who has given voice to over a hundred audiobooks and also has directed the recording of dozens more. Bean blends a beautiful combination of Amarillo twang to the vowels and Bostonite grinding to the consonants, capturing Caldwell's delicate story with a uniquely dignified grace that does not give quarter to the sugary sentimentality of so many tales in this genre.
The senior member of the friendship by 10 years, Caldwell still has a lot to learn from Knapp. As they spent a great deal of time outdoors, either walking the dogs or training to row down the river, both women overcome personal demons to let in the light of the other. Both journalists, both alcoholics, both lonely dog lovers, Caldwell charts the little differences between them that enriched their extraordinary friendship. This book is a real and straightforward treatment of grief, put into proper perspective as a situation of personal growth and memory through the voice work of Joyce Bean, who keeps both feet on the ground in a tone that does justice to Caldwell's deeply honest reflections. Megan Volpert
Critic reviews
Featured Article: The Best Audiobooks on Friendship to Deepen Your Bonds
Friends are the family we choose. When we’re going through hardships or have something to celebrate, our friends are often the people we turn to first. So much of literature, art, music, and film is dedicated to romantic love, but the love between friends can be just as (if not more) rewarding. Of course, plenty of authors "are" writing about friendship, in all its many forms. Here is our list of the very best audiobooks about friendship across genres.
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In the early evening on October 1, 2003, Christina Crosby was three miles into a 17 mile bicycle ride, intent on reaching her goal of 1,000 miles for the riding season. She was a respected senior professor of English who had celebrated her 50th birthday a month before. As she crested a hill, she caught a branch in the spokes of her bicycle, which instantly pitched her to the pavement. Her chin took the full force of the blow, and her head snapped back. In that instant, she was paralyzed.
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Extraordinary writer
- By Professor on 01-20-24
By: Christina Crosby
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Reading My Father
- A Memoir
- By: Alexandra Styron
- Narrated by: Alexandra Styron
- Length: 10 hrs and 27 mins
- Unabridged
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Story
Alexandra Styron's parents—the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Sophie’s Choice and his political activist wife, Rose—were, for half a century, leading players on the world’s cultural stage. Alexandra was raised under both the halo of her father’s brilliance and the long shadow of his troubled mind. Reading My Father portrays the epic sweep of an American artist’s life. It is also a tale of filial love, beautifully written with humor, compassion, and grace.
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William Styron Ranks...
- By Douglas on 12-22-13
By: Alexandra Styron
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A Dog Walks into a Nursing Home
- Lessons in the Good Life from an Unlikely Teacher
- By: Sue Halpern
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 7 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
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At loose ends with her daughter leaving home and her husband on the road, Sue Halpern decided to give herself and Pransky, her under-occupied Labradoodle, a new leash - er, lease - on life by getting the two of them certified as a therapy dog team. Smart, spirited, and instinctively compassionate, Pransky turned out to be not only a terrific therapist but an unerring moral compass. In the unlikely sounding arena of a public nursing home, she led her teammate into a series of encounters with the residents that revealed depths of warmth, humor, and insight Halpern hadn't expected.
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my mistake!
- By joyce on 02-02-14
By: Sue Halpern
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Will's Red Coat
- The Story of One Old Dog Who Chose to Live Again
- By: Tom Ryan
- Narrated by: Tom Ryan
- Length: 8 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
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Drawn by an online post, Tom Ryan adopted Will, a frightened, deaf, and mostly blind elderly dog, and brought him home to live with him and Atticus. The only owners Will ever knew had grown too fragile to take care of themselves or of him. Ultimately Will was left at a kill shelter in New Jersey. Tom hoped to give Will a place to die with dignity amid the rustic beauty of the White Mountains of his New Hampshire home. But when Will bites him numerous times and acts out in violent displays, Tom realizes he is in for a challenge.
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Wildflowers And Drunken Butterfly Dances
- By Gillian on 05-06-17
By: Tom Ryan
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A Big Little Life
- A Memoir of a Joyful Dog Named Trixie
- By: Dean Koontz
- Narrated by: Christopher Lane
- Length: 6 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
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In a profound, funny, and beautifully rendered portrait of a beloved companion, bestselling novelist Dean Koontz remembers the golden retriever who changed his life. A retired service dog, Trixie was three when Dean and his wife, Gerda, welcomed her into their home. She was superbly trained, but her greatest gifts couldn’t be taught: her keen intelligence, her innate joy, and an uncanny knack for living in the moment.
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Indescribable.... I was totally captivated!
- By Leigh on 04-11-13
By: Dean Koontz
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Until I Say Good-Bye
- My Year of Living with Joy
- By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, Bret Witter
- Narrated by: Karen White
- Length: 9 hrs and 15 mins
- Unabridged
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Susan Spencer-Wendel's Until I Say Good-Bye: My Year of Living with Joy is a moving and inspirational memoir by a woman who makes the most of her final days after discovering she has amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). After Spencer-Wendel, a celebrated journalist at the Palm Beach Post, learns of her diagnosis of ALS, more commonly known as Lou Gehrig's disease, she embarks on several adventures, traveling to several countries and sharing special experiences with loved ones.
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Until I Say Good-Bye is a paradox for me.
- By Bonny on 03-19-13
By: Susan Spencer-Wendel, and others
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Modern Loss
- Candid Conversation About Grief. Beginners Welcome.
- By: Rebecca Soffer, Gabrielle Birkner
- Narrated by: Meredith Mitchell, Josh Bloomberg
- Length: 7 hrs and 40 mins
- Unabridged
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At a time when we mourn public figures and national tragedies with hashtags, where intimate posts about loss go viral and we receive automated birthday reminders for dead friends, it's clear we are navigating new terrain without a road map. Let's face it: Most of us have always had a difficult time talking about death and sharing our grief. We're awkward and uncertain; we avoid, ignore, or even deny feelings of sadness; we offer platitudes; we send sympathy bouquets whittled out of fruit.
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Not What I Was Expecting
- By Bessie Mae on 03-01-23
By: Rebecca Soffer, and others
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The Book of Help
- A Memoir in Remedies
- By: Megan Griswold
- Narrated by: Megan Griswold
- Length: 11 hrs and 14 mins
- Unabridged
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A hilarious and heartbreaking memoir-in-remedies by a self-described "professional soul-searcher" that details a journey of self-discovery through more than 160 tonics, seminars, regimens, and transformative therapies. With a voice that is at once intimate and hilarious, Megan captures the openness and honesty necessary for people to take a new path in life. Listeners will open the audiobook with curiosity about all the different healing therapies that Megan tries, but leave with a new understanding of themselves.
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Mr. Toad's Wild Ride has some serious competition!
- By Elisa R. Goodman on 02-15-19
By: Megan Griswold
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Walking to Listen
- 4,000 Miles Across America, One Story at a Time
- By: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Narrated by: Andrew Forsthoefel
- Length: 13 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
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At 23, Andrew Forsthoefel headed out the back door of his home in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, with a backpack, an audio recorder, his copies of Whitman and Rilke, and a sign that read "Walking to Listen". He had just graduated from Middlebury College and was ready to begin his adult life, but he didn't know how. So he decided to take a cross-country quest for guidance, one where everyone he met would be his guide. In the year that followed, he faced an Appalachian winter and a Mojave summer. He met beasts inside: fear, loneliness, doubt.
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Transcends the typical trekking story
- By barefoot rabbit on 08-07-18
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Not Fade Away
- A Memoir of Senses Lost and Found
- By: Rebecca Alexander, Sascha Alper
- Narrated by: Tavia Gilbert
- Length: 7 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Thirty-four-year-old Rebecca Alexander is a psychotherapist, a spin instructor, a volunteer, and an athlete. She is also almost completely blind, with significantly deteriorated hearing. Not Fade Away is a deeply moving exploration of the obstacles we all face-physical, psychological, and philosophical. Rebecca's story is an exquisite reminder to live each day to its fullest.
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Loved this!
- By Daryl on 11-24-14
By: Rebecca Alexander, and others
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Driving on the Rim
- By: Thomas McGuane
- Narrated by: Traber Burns
- Length: 12 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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The unforgettable voyager of this dark picaresque is I. B. "Berl" Pickett, M.D., whose die was probably cast the moment his mother thought to name him after Irving Berlin. Other insults piled on apace thereafter: the spasms of Pentecostal Sunday worship; the social debilitation of following his parents' itinerant rug-shampooing business; the erotic initiation at the hands of his aunt. It's hard to imagine what would have become of him had he not gone to medical school.
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Delightful
- By Roy on 01-05-11
By: Thomas McGuane
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After the Eclipse
- A Mother's Murder, a Daughter's Search
- By: Sarah Perry
- Narrated by: Emily Woo Zeller
- Length: 13 hrs and 49 mins
- Unabridged
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A fierce memoir of a mother's murder, a daughter's coming-of-age in the wake of immense loss, and her ultimate mission to know the woman who gave her life.
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True crime memoir
- By Julie on 11-03-17
By: Sarah Perry
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Native Country of the Heart
- A Memoir
- By: Cherríe Moraga
- Narrated by: Cherríe Moraga
- Length: 7 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
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Native Country of the Heart is the writer and activist Cherrie Moraga's love letter to her "unlettered" mother. It begins with her mother, Elvira Isabel Moraga, who as a child, along with her siblings, was hired out by her own father to pick cotton in California's Imperial Valley. The lives of Cherrie and her mother, and of their people, are woven together in a story of critical reflection and deep personal revelation as Moraga charts her own coming to consciousness alongside the heartbreaking story of her mother's decline.
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a must read for all chicanx
- By Rachel Barnett on 04-28-19
By: Cherríe Moraga
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We Are Unprepared
- By: Meg Little Reilly
- Narrated by: Zach Villa
- Length: 8 hrs and 47 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
We Are Unprepared is a novel about the next big storm, the one that changes our relationship to nature and each other...the superstorm that threatens to destroy a marriage, a rural Vermont town, and the Eastern Seaboard when it hits. But the destruction begins months earlier, when fear infects people's lives and spreads like a plague.
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A Sociological Almost Post-Apocalyptic Thriller
- By Brian on 12-25-16
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The Company You Keep
- By: Neil Gordon
- Narrated by: Donald Corren, Hillary Huber, Kirby Heyborne, and others
- Length: 15 hrs and 51 mins
- Unabridged
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Set against the rise and fall of the radical antiwar group the Weather Underground, The Company You Keep is a sweeping American saga about sacrifice, the ecstatic righteousness of youth, and the tension between political ideals and family loyalties. When Jason Sinai, one of the last Vietnam-era fugitives still wanted on murder charges for a robbery gone wrong in 1974, encounters a young newspaper reporter in search of a story, he must abandon years of safe underground life for the dangerous life of the road.
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Audiobook of the Year
- By connie on 05-13-12
By: Neil Gordon
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Best!!
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What listeners say about Let's Take the Long Way Home
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- NRo
- 09-07-24
Didn’t want this book to end
It’s one of those books where you get to know the main character of the story so well that you think you know them. I didn’t want the book to end. I’d felt her joy and her pain, and the love she had for her best friend and her dog. She’s someone we all know.
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- CT
- 11-19-11
Some day I will have to read this book...
...in an attempt to erase the narration from my memory. Then I might actually enjoy it.
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- Kelly Wiley
- 05-12-15
Thought provoking
I loved this story. I laughed, I cried, I lamented that I don't have a relationship with a girlfriend as strong and all encompassing as the one played out in the story.
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- Grammie W
- 01-13-24
One of the most beautiful stories I have ever listened to.
I loved the relationship that these two
women had built between them
even though it is not last long enough!
It is a memoir to cherish!
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Overall
- Poppy
- 09-17-10
Devastatingly beautiful and superbly written
Gail Caldwell is obviously a very talented writer and her descriptions of loss and grief are unbelievably well and creatively described. I was moved to tears many times, and was constantly surprised by the tale which takes so many different turns despite the knowledge that Caroline would die. The pace of the tale and non-linear time line were seamless and very enjoyable. I didn't want it to end.
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7 people found this helpful
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- SistaMoonShine
- 07-13-17
beautiful memior
i really enjoyed this beautiful well written account about two women who bonded deeply to each other.
thank you Ms. Caldwell for allowing readers to share your relationship with Caroline.
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- StylishGal
- 07-05-19
Thought provoking
I listened to the audible version as I packed up my house of twenty years. It was exactly what I needed; reminding us that we all will eventually die, some much sooner than others. Although there are heartbreaking matters in the book, I ultimately found it uplifting. Perhaps I was in the mood for such a book, but I did enjoy it and recommend it for fellow dog lovers.
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- christine &
- 04-20-16
Heartbreaking
incredible story of human and animal connection that gives tribute to the friendship if a lifetime
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- Grandma R
- 04-20-20
Raw & honest
The author gave words to a variety of emotions I’ve experienced after losing my husband, my great love. It hurts, yet it heals.
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- ReNewedPet LLC
- 09-25-18
Uplifting! Brave!
This was a beautiful uplifting story about friendship and love and Dogs! Beautiful story loved the authors realism.
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