Bestselling author Barbara Jenkins is returning to Poplar Bluff in more ways than one.
Physically, she’s coming home for an author event on Saturday at the Poplar Bluff Municipal Library.
At the same time, her memoir retraces her childhood, her famous walk across America with then-husband Peter, and her reinvention after the marriage and fame crumbled.
The book’s full title reflects this: “So Long as It’s Wild: Standing Strong After My Famous Walk Across America.”
The walk across America was 3,000 miles. The journey to Jenkin’s memoir took 40 years.
“I did not want to write this book,” she recalled.
__Fame followed by 40 years of silence__
From 1976-1979, the Jenkinses walked 3,000 miles across the United States, capturing national attention, award-winning books and fame. It fell apart from there, culminating in an acrimonious divorce in 1988 and leaving Jenkins to raise three children. No one would be interested in her story now, she thought.
Her family and friends disagreed. Jenkins’ children had long urged her to write her story. Several years ago, the first clue of outside interest came over lunch with her son Jedidiah and his friends, actors Aaron Paul and Sophie Bush. Paul said he had broached turning the Jenkins’ story into a series with Hulu, but Jenkins’ ex-husband owned half the rights to the couple’s co-authored books and vetoed it. Bush urged Jenkins to write her own book instead. Jenkins politely declined.
Then a few years later, Jenkin’s young granddaughter asked, “Did you really walk across America?”
“I’m telling you, the light bulb — it was it was like being hit upside the head,” Jenkins said. “And I just knew that if I did not tell my story from my point of view, how I experienced walking across America, everything that happened from my point of view, it would be a lost story forever.”
So after “40 years of silence,” she began to write.
__Journey from Doniphan native to author__
Jenkins, maiden name Pennell, was born in Doniphan and grew up in Poplar Bluff, graduating from Poplar Bluff High School in the 1960s and working her way through the College of the Ozarks. Poverty was a constant struggle for her family, and Jenkins had a complicated relationship with her mother. These made her hesitate to write her history while her parents and grandparents lived.
“They were proud, hardworking, good, salt-of-the-earth people but they would not have understood being written about, and strangers knowing about them,” she said.
She also had to wait for the pain of her divorce to subside.
“I could not tell that story without either hurt or vindictiveness or bitterness, or an agenda to get back at him, or something. It takes years for those kinds of wounds to heal,” she said
Now, she said, “I just tell the story. I don’t do any commentary, I let the reader decide for themselves.”
__Readers, filmmakers decided__
Readers indeed decided. “So Long as It’s Wild” has been praised by Publishers Weekly and Library Journal, celebrities like Dolly Parton, and everyday people. The response brings “a great feeling of fulfillment” to Jenkins.
“Books are an interesting thing,” she said. “It’s like anything in the creative entertainment world. Whether you write a song, write a book, or paint a painting, you never really know how the viewer or the reader is going to respond. You hope it communicates what you wanted to communicate. And that was my hope, that it would touch lives, that it would speak to the reader. Reading books is a very private and personal experience.”
Jenkins’ story will continue to grow. In a couple of weeks, she will sign an option for “So Long as It’s Wild,” allowing filmmakers to develop it into a movie, though it will be several years before it reaches the big screen.
Despite the attention, Jenkins explained, “The stories, the message in this book, the takeaway, they’re all much bigger than me. It’s not a story just about me or for me, but I happen to be the main character.”
What is the takeaway?
“I hope they (readers) are encouraged in their own lives that no matter what they face, the trials that they face, that it’s only for a season. You will make it and you can make it to the other side, and you can be victorious. You can overcome great odds in this life in your life,” Jenkins said.
__Homecoming__
Her return to Poplar Bluff this weekend is poignant. She and her children visited her family in Southeast Missouri multiple times, but now she does so as the last surviving Pennell. The author event will be dedicated to her younger sister Vicky, who died unexpectedly in April.
“So coming back this time, it’s very bittersweet... Yet in my heart, I feel like is it a wonderful way I can honor my family,” Jenkins said.
She will bring memorabilia of the walk to the event, including her backpack and a pair of boots she wore. Library staff have also prepared a video and photo presentation.
“It’ll be like living history,” Jenkins noted, adding the trek still feels “as real to me sitting here today as it was back then.”
The title of “So Long as It’s Wild” came from a quote by influential naturalist John Muir: “All that the sun shines on is beautiful, so long as it’s wild.” These words stood out to Jenkins when thinking about the wildness of the American landscape and her emotional journey through life, and may reflect why her memoir resonated with readers.
“It is a physical walk across America, it is a physical story, and I have so many elements to this story that are symbolic of everybody’s story,” she mused. “We’re all on a journey, and everybody has their own forks in the road, their own battles, their own storms, their own heartaches, joys, triumphs, tragedies. So this book has all of that. But at the end of the day, you will close the book feeling like, ‘Man, if she can do that, I can handle what I’m facing.’”
The Poplar Bluff Municipal Library will host Jenkins for a presentation and book signing from 1-3 p.m. Saturday in the Main Branch, located at 318 N. Main St. “So Long as It’s Wild” is available for $20 at the front desk.