Robert James Waller, author of the bestselling romance The Bridges of Madison County, died on March 10 at age 77. Waller's novel follows Robert Kincaid, a National Geographic photographer chronicling the covered bridges of Madison County, Iowa in the 1960s, where he engages in a four-day affair with Francesca Johnson, a married Italian-American woman. This fictional story is presented as a novelization of true events, though Waller was often coy about the many similarities between himself and the main character, and whether or not those similarities extended to the novel's extramarital relations. The book rose to the top of the bestsellers lists, where is remained for several years. It has since sold more than 50 million copies, and was adapted into a 1995 feature film starring Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep and a short-running Broadway musical in 2014.
In 2002, Waller continued the stories of Robert Kincaid and Francesca Johnson in A Thousand Country Roads: An Epilogue to The Bridges of Madison County, in which the two lovers reflect on the four days that forever changed their lives. High Plains Tango (2005) follows Carlisle McMillan, the illegitimate son of Robert Kincaid, and his relationships with two women in small town South Dakota. The Bridges of Madison County was last published by Grand Central in 2014 ($8, 9781455554287). --Tobias Mutter
