The Ride of Her Life: The True Story of a Woman, Her Horse, and Their Last-Chance Journey Across America

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Annie kissed his little head with tears in her eyes. Two years. She opened the door of her house and stood there, looking around. This true life tale of one woman’s unlikely cross-country adventure makes for a light read. In 1954, 63 year old Annie Wilkins, a single person and failed farmer sets out on a journey from Maine to the California coast after being told by her physician she only has two years to live.

If nothing else, I'll give the author unlimited kudos for research on what was going on in the mid-1950s at every location mentioned - it's nothing short of amazing. That it's an engrossing, well-documented story of a very brave - and very real - woman is a plus. Thanks to deeply sourced research and her own travels along Wilkins' route, Letts vividly portrays an audacious woman whose optimism, courage, and good humor are to be marveled at and admired. Upbeat and touching, Wilkins' story is the perfect pandemic escapist read." - Booklist (starred review) I find it reassuring in this time when some friends, some family and some media outlets are shouting about how divided our country is that perhaps we’re more alike than one would think.Annie Wilkins: 62-year-old Maine single farmer diagnosed with TB expected to live only two to four years. Hadn’t stepped foot outside the state, except briefly as a child. Embodies Maine’s independent spirit. The triumphant true story of a woman who rode her horse across America in the 1950s, fulfilling her dying wish to see the Pacific Ocean, from the #1 New York Times bestselling author of The Perfect Horse and The Eighty-Dollar Champion. Tiny little farm in Maine, a mile off the main road. It was her grandfather’s farm and then her parents’. She grew up watching her family work sunrise to sunset, year after year. Clawing out a living from the land. Before she started traveling she lived on family property in Minot, Maine only a few miles from where she was born. Sadly, her health failed and she was given a diagnosis of terminal cancer (2 to 4 years left, they said). They offered her a place in a rest home. She was in her early sixties. She decided that was not how she wanted to spend the last years of her life. Instead she bought a horse, probably part Morgan, just before he was to be sent to a glue factory. She named him Tarzan and was determined to ride him across the country to California. Her dog would accompany them.

Annie met some famous people and became famous herself, once her story was published as a human interest in local newspapers. She got numerous job offers and even an offer of marriage. Her experience was extraordinary enough that veterinarians treated her animals free most of the time and it was heartwarming to see that they were all each other's life companions.

I found it crazy and naive that she thought she could just ride a horse across the US without any real provisions like food and money, no plans to stay anywhere along the way, or what she would do to survive once she reached California. As I spun the results of my research into a story, my own vista grew smaller. But Annie’s world got bigger and bigger as she traveled to the wide-open spaces of the West.” Her travel companions included a strapping horse named Tarzan and her dog, a mutt named Depeche Toi (French for “hurry up”). Total strangers along her route – which Wilkins figured out as she went along – were eager to offer food and shelter to the woman the press dubbed the “Widow Wilkins.” In rural areas, she sometimes slept in a barn with the animals. In other locations, authorities helped her find a stable. It is both a sad story of a woman who worked very hard her whole life and was pretty much penniless and it is also very inspiring story of a woman who at such age is so brave and wanders into unknown. Knowing she was about to lose her family farm and with nowhere to turn for help, Annie Wilkins places an ad in the paper for a sturdy horse. After seeing a few, she knew she’d met the perfect match in an older Morgan she named Tarzan. Along with her spunky dog Depeche Toi, Annie hit the road.

Another thing that was wild to me is there were many occasions where Annie would spend the night in a small town jail. Not because she had broken any law, but because it was a place to be indoors and safe for the night. She might happen upon a police officer and ask to be escorted to the nearby jail. I hate camping, so I suppose a one-night stay in a cell might be better. But I’m not so sure. lolTrusting to her own toughness and will, she was convinced she would be fine as she was sure there was still a spirit of friendliness and empathy from the American people. Indeed, in so many cases her belief turned out to be true, as Annie was met with so many accolades and stayed and was cared for in so many homes across the roads she traveled, becoming a celebrity. She was lying in bed, half-­delirious, when she heard shouting voices cut through the quiet. Depeche Toi sprang up and started wriggling in joyful anticipation. The French boys had snowshoed over to see how Annie and Waldo were holding up. After coming in long enough to recognize the dire conditions at Annie’s farm, one headed down to the main road to call an ambulance, while the other busied about doing farm chores. A few hours later, Annie heard the scrape of the plow. By the time the ambulance finally arrived, she was so weak they had to carry her out. This is an EXCELLENT book based on the true story of Annie Wilkins. She is a farmer in Maine. When she realizes that there is no future in farming in Maine, she buys a horse and sets off on a journey to CA. She, her horse, Tarzan, and her dog, Depeche Toi, experience much. Starting in the fall of 1954, they finally arrive in Hollywood CA in the spring of 1956. Along the way, Annie sleeps outdoors, in jails and in the homes of strangers. One thing she definitely found: that the “American people still welcome travelers as much as they did in pioneer days." I loved this book! It’s a wonderful non-fiction account of Annie Wilkins and her late-in-life adventure across the United States in the mid 1950’s.

With her little dog, Depeche Toi and her horse Tarzan, they set off West with no map. Annie figured people along the journey would help them find their way west. The trio were able to spend the night in barns and homes of strangers, who often fed them and recommended other places to stay on their journey ahead.

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To show this first ever coast-­to-­coast color broadcast, the Radio Corporation of America had sent out a preproduction run of two hundred of their brand-­new color receivers to RCA Victor distributors across the continental United States. A few of the receivers were put into strategic central locations, such as hotel lobbies in major cities, situated so as to attract the most attention for this newfangled invention. On New Year’s Day, a few thousand people in selected cities scattered across the country—­Omaha, Nebraska, and Wilkes-­Barre, Pennsylvania, St. Louis and Toledo, Baltimore and New Haven—­were able to see the golden shine of the palominos, the vivid reds and yellows of the roses, the crimson and white of the drum majorettes. Southern California, America’s land of perpetual sunshine, a mild and sunny sixty-­two degrees that New Year’s morning, would never again seem quite so far away. It was a fitting start to 1954—­the year the world suddenly accelerated. Some three thousand miles away, in Minot (pronounced MY-­nut), Maine, it was four degrees Fahrenheit and windy. Sixty-­two-­year-­old Annie Wilkins and her elderly uncle Waldo did not have a color television—­or any television, for that matter. They didn’t have electricity. Their water came from a pump, their heat from a wood-­burning cast-­iron stove. It might have been New Year’s Day, but there was no holiday from the endless chores that marked their days on the top of Woodman Hill. And how did she respond to that? Unfailingly, for the first 62 years of her life, she just kept going. Not a word of complaint. She adopted her father’s motto—“Keep going and you’ll get there”—which is helpful for a journey, even if it’s the ordinary journey of life. Mesannie Wilkins (Annie) was 63 when her doctor told her she had 2 years to live. She’d just recovered from pneumonia when they found a spot on her lung. The doctor wasn’t sure if it was cancer or tuberculosis, but either way the prognosis wasn’t good. Well, great start to the story - and great idea, for Annie. She had no husband, children, or other living family members. All alone in the world she decided it was time to live her final dream despite all the nay-sayers and discouragers who try to keep people from living. She was a strong woman and she became stronger along the way.