These people make the walk the revelation it was for the Jenkinses and to a degree for us.
Most memorable, however, are not the incidents of the road, but the people whose lives the Jenkinses share for amounts of time varying from just a few moments to many months. The Jenkinses, now walking together from New Orleans to Oregon's coast, do see beautiful sunsets and make friends with the local wildlife, but on the flip side are clouds of mosquitoes so thick they clog the nose, rattlesnakes, practitioners of voodoo, numbing extremes of heat and cold, near disastrous slides down a mountain, and automobile accidents. Knowing much of this before beginning this new volume, ''The Walk West'' (the story of the first half of Peter's walk was told in ''A Walk Across America,'' William Morrow & Co., 1979), I was afraid the book might be a sticky, saccharine story. But he found things even more precious in Mobile, Ala., he found God, in New Orleans his wife-to-be, and all along the road people who took him into their homes and hearts. Along the way he lost something very precious Cooper was hit by a car.
The first long leg was from New York to New Orleans. He figured the walk ought to take about eight months. With his dog, Cooper, he would walk across the country and see if there was anything he'd missed. He decided to take one more good look before leaving. Twenty-two years old and just finishing college, he thought his country was selfish, spoiled, and generally not much good. Eight years ago Peter Jenkins had had it with America.
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