The Longest Ride

Many Shades of Love

Nicholas Sparks’s bestselling novel, The Longest Ride, has already been turned into a movie (by George Tillman Jr.). He writes the kind of books that are made for the screen.

Two very different love stories unfold and come together in an unpredictable happy ending. In the first, 91-year-old Ira Levinson drives his car off a snowy road and is wounded. He is unable to extricate himself from the car, and in a haze he sees his dead wife Ruth appear to sit by his side and reminisce about the old days.  The second has bright student art history student Sophia, meeting a bull-riding cowboy, Luke, who is unlike any man she has come across before.

The two love stories belong to different eras, different class of people and very different families. What they have in common is the young lovers’ ability and willingness to transcend all barriers.

Starving, dehydrated and in pain, Ira keeps himself alive by going over his romance with Ruth. Both belonged to Jewish families, scarred by Hitler, World War II and the Holocaust. The shy son of an old-style haberdasher, Ira goes to war and is severely wounded. He comes back alive but with a disability that keeps him away from Ruth. In the end their strong bond survives and they go on to build a happy life together, and a home filled with beautiful art.

Sophia Danko, the daughter of immigrants who run a small town delicatessen, goes against her family’s wishes, and moves to college. She is just over a bad relationship when she runs into handsome cowboy Luke Collins. She is fascinated by the idea of his life on a ranch he runs with his mother, and his passion for the dangerous sport of bull-riding.

If in the case of Ira and Ruth, the similarity of their lifestyle and culture draws them together, it’s obviously opposites attract in the tentative romance between Sophia and Luke—they have nothing in common except curiosity about the other. 

Nicholas Sparks, best known for The Notebook and Walk to Remember writes in a simple, no-frills style, which is probably what wins him millions of readers.  Can’t say The Longest  Ride is a great book, but Sparks writes for his fans, and they have no complaints.

The Longest Ride

By Nicholas Sparks

Published by Grand Central

Pages: 464