
Growing up in Racine, Wisconsin, a young Walker dreamed of seeing the world and becoming a writer. She enlisted in the US Air Force after high school and flew a typewriter across Europe as a clerk typist. While in the UK, she fell head over heels for all things English and became a confirmed tea-drinking Anglophile.
At age forty, cancer compelled Walker to finally publish her first book. Then, in her sixties, she discovered she was neurodivergent, spurring her to write a novel about a book-loving, neurodivergent senior with unusual quirks and sensory issues: The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honeychurch.
These days, Walker lives in Northern California with her Renaissance-man husband and two rescue terriers, sipping tea (Yorkshire Gold) and dreaming of visiting Hay-on-Wye one day.
Here Walker dreamcasts an adaptation of The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honeychurch:
If I were to cast my book as a movie, who would I like to see play the lead roles? First, let me tell you a bit about the main characters.Visit Laura Jensen Walker's website.
Primrose Honeychurch is a solitary, sharp-tongued recluse with sensory issues who prefers books to people. Accustomed to maintaining a set routine in her cookie-cutter Las Vegas suburb, when the seventy-year-old receives life-altering news, she sets off on an unexpected, life-altering pilgrimage to the UK.
During her journey, Primrose meets a tattooed, blue-haired American singer and lesbian named Riley, and gets to know her twenty-year-old Cornish great-niece, the neurodivergent Clover, who becomes a kindred spirit. Primrose also reconnects with her sixty-something cousin Daisy, Clover’s grandmother.
While writing the curmudgeonly, set-in-her-ways Primrose, I found myself thinking of Frances McDormand, who did such a wonderful job playing the strict, outspoken Olive in the TV miniseries Olive Kitteridge. Frances McDormand would make a great Primrose. At least, that’s what I thought until I saw Sally Fields’ brilliant performance as Tova in Remarkably Bright Creatures. Now Sally and Frances are neck-in-neck for the role of Primrose.
Kristen Stewart who shot to fame in Twilight and has since gone on to distinguish herself in films like The Runaways where she played rocker Joan Jett and Spencer, where she played Princess Diana would be perfect as the gay, free-spirited American singer Riley.
For young artist Clover, I envision Ella Bruccoleri who I first fell in love with in Call the Midwife as young Sister Frances. This delightful English actress with the guileless, innocent face solidified that love as captivating odd duck Mary Bennett in The Other Bennett Sister. I adore her.
For Primrose’s sixty-something Cornish cousin and Clover’s grandmother Daisy, I see Kristin Scott Thomas born in Cornwall who shot to fame in The English Patient. She was excellent in Gosford Park and Darkest Hour where she played Winston Churchill’s wife Clemmie.
My Book, The Movie: The Alphabet Sleuths.
Q&A with Laura Jensen Walker.
The Page 69 Test: The Alphabet Sleuths.
Writers Read: Laura Jensen Walker (February 2026).
My Book, The Movie: The Postmistress of Puddlington.
The Page 69 Test: The Postmistress of Puddlington.
--Marshal Zeringue











