Walk Two Moons by Sharon Creech

A book about putting ourselves in someone else's shoes

Recently I browsed my school library and an interesting title caught my eye: Walk Two Moons. What could this be about? I didn’t know the author so I decided to read it. Turns out, it was a total page-turner.

The novel follows a thirteen year old girl, Sal, on a roadtrip with her grandparents. They are going to Idaho where her mother is buried. Along the way, Sal also tells the story of her friend Phoebe whose mother went missing and how the two girls tried to solve the mystery. Their two stories are intertwined, only Sal’s mother died in a bus accident, whereas Phoebe’s mother returned to her family after a while.

On the roadtrip they trace her mother’s path on her last journey and Sal connects with her dead mother by experiencing her passions, such as a love of nature. At the same time, by telling about her connection to Phoebe and her story we learn about the challenges they both face in making sense of their mothers’ absences.

This is where I think the title of the book reveals itself. Sal used to question her mother’s decision to leave the family on the journey that would kill her. By following her mother’s path, Sal puts herself in her mother’s shoes and realizes she shouldn’t have judged. And in Phoebe’s story someone left a note saying “Don’t judge a man until you’ve walked two moons in his moccasins”. I think the road trip represents the two moons that you have to walk in order to make a conclusion on something.

This book obviously has sad themes, but I thought it was more hopeful than sad. It reflects on that you can find meaning and learn to think about something or someone differently by putting yourself in their shoes. In fact, the saying with the moccasins seems to be a Native American version of “putting ourselves in someone else’s shoes”, a saying we use today (and it happens to be that Sal’s mother was Native American).

I enjoyed reading this book. The two intertwined stories made it complex but interesting. I noticed that the book was published already in 1994, so it is almost 30 years old now but I felt that had no impact on its message. I had not before read a book by Sharon Creech. The book jacket mentions a list of other books by her and I’m tempted to read another one.