“One autumn morning in 1849, Henry David Thoreau stepped out his front door to walk the beaches of Cape Cod.  Over a century and a half later, Ben Shattuck does the same.”  Thus begins the text on the back cover of this, Shattuck’s first book, and a fine one it is.

The son of a painter father and a mother who owned an art gallery, Shattuck grew up on the south coast of Massachusetts, attended Cornell and the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, and married the celebrity actress, Jenny Slate in 2021.  Along the way, he experienced heartbreak, depression, and insomnia which led to his first walk from the elbow of Cape Cod to Provincetown equipped only with a bathing suit, a hunk of cheese, and a notebook for sketches and notes.  Along the way, he met kind people who gave him shelter, food, and directions. Emboldened by this experience, off he went to Mt. Katahdin in Maine, Mt. Wachusett in Massachusetts, Pillsbury Island on the Allagash River in Maine, Walden Pond in Concord, MA, and Sakonnet Harbor, RI where his great-great-grandfather had bought land back in the 19th C.

Along the way, Shattuck shares numerous quotes from Thoreau’s writings, speculates about friendship, brothers, and love, and makes the case for walking, a form of transportation that enables one to slowly experience Nature and the surroundings.  As his quest wraps up, Shattuck meets a woman when his best friends invite him to double date with a friend of theirs.  The friend turns out to be Jenny Slate who went to high school and college with my younger daughter.  Love ensues as does a child followed by their COVID delayed marriage.  All ends well in this fine first book by a writer who I am confident we will read more of in the future.