Video recording of a Walking America event. There are two basic plots in literature, the late John Gardner once suggested – somebody goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town. In two new novels, authors Sharon White and Janice Deal subvert that formula; the recently arrived stranger ends up journeying – on foot – in the place she doesn’t quite yet belong. In Deal’s The Blue Door, Flo’s impetus is a search for a lost dog in a desert town. In White’s Minato Sketches, Gigi, recovering from a stroke, wanders through gardens and preserves of Japan before embarking on an obsessive search for wild boars in the Fukushima exclusion zone. Both women are propelled by loss and grief and seek renewal, however elusive.