The Notebook

It is October of 1946. Noah Calhoun sits on the wrap-around porch of his plantation-style house in his hometown of New Bern, North Carolina, watching the sun set over the nearby river. He wonders if the original owners of the house, which was built in 1772, did the same thing when they lived in it. Noah, who bought the run-down house 11 months ago—right after returning from the war—has spent nearly a year renovating the place. A few weeks ago, a reporter from Raleigh came to take some pictures and interview Noah about the restoration for an article. Though the house is pretty much finished, the sprawling 12 acres around it are still in need of a lot of work.

Noah, tired but happy after a long day of work, reaches for his guitar and tunes it. As he plays, he looks up at the stars and thinks absentmindedly about the funds he’s spent restoring the house and the surrounding property—he knows he’ll be out of money soon and will need to find a job, but he isn’t worried about his finances. Money “bore[s]” him—he enjoys the simple things in life. At 31, Noah lives alone with a three-legged hound dog, Clem. He hasn’t dated in over a year, and he often wonders if he's destined to be alone forever. Shaking the thought from his head, Noah fetches his well-worn copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and sits back down to read some poems. Whitman’s musings on nature, solitude, and mortality soothe him.

Noah continues reflecting on his life so far. After having left his hometown of New Bern for 14 years, Noah has recently returned to find the town largely unchanged. Noah’s mother died when he was a small child and his father raised him—but last year, his father passed away, and now Noah’s only friend is an elderly black man named Gus who lives down the road. Gus comes over several times a week to play music, drink, and share stories. Though Noah is not and never has been married, he has known “perfect love.” As the clouds roll in, Noah thinks back to 1932—the year he experienced love that “changed him forever.”

Just after high school graduation, at the start of the summer of 1932, Noah showed up to the local Neuse River Festival to find his childhood friends Fin and Sarah talking to a pretty girl he’d never seen before. Fin and Sarah casually introduced him to the girl. As Noah shook her hand, he knew she was “the one.” Their relationship was like a “tornado wind.” The girl, whose wealthy family was spending the summer in town on account of her father’s work, soon became Noah’s best friend and lover. They spent every minute they could together, riding canoes on the river through summer storms and attending town dances. They shared their thoughts about art, life, and the future. At the end of the summer, they lost their virginities to each other. Three weeks later, the girl left town—and Noah never heard from her again.

Noah shakes himself from his reverie. He remembers talking to Gus about this girl recently. Gus pointed out that the girl is “the ghost [Noah has] been running from” by working so hard on the house. Gus warned Noah that no matter how hard he worked or how desperately he tried to forget his first love, he’d never be able to—a first love, Gus said, stays with a person forever. Noah returns to reading Walt Whitman for a spell before heading inside and going up to bed.

Meanwhile, a hundred miles away, Allie Nelson sits on the porch swing of her parents’ house in Raleigh. She is pondering a decision she’s made—she doesn’t know if it’s the right one, but she is certain that if she doesn’t take advantage of the opportunity before her, she’ll always regret it. She has told her fiancé Lon that she is heading to the coast of North Carolina to do some antiquing and take a break from planning their massive wedding—but the truth about the trip she has planned is far more complicated.

The next morning, after a short drive from Raleigh, Allie arrives at a small inn in downtown New Bern. She unpacks, eats lunch, and visits some antique shops. By four thirty in the afternoon she is back in her room, her cover story taken care of. She calls Lon to give him the phone number of the inn. He hurries off the phone—he is due in court.

Allie has known Lon for four years. When they met, she was volunteering at a hospital in Raleigh, tending to soldiers returned home from war. Meeting Lon allowed her to feel her fears and traumas from tending the wounded were driven away all at once. The handsome, successful Lon has been raised like Allie: to believe that in the “caste system of the South,” one’s family name and material possessions are often the most important factors in considering a marriage. Though Allie occasionally rebelled against this idea as a young woman, she has recently come to see that the security Lon offers her is a positive. As she thinks about their relationship, she begins feeling guilty about having made the trip to New Bern—a place she never thought she’d have the strength to return to.

After taking a bath and dressing in a casual, modest dress, Allie—tormented by how disappointed her parents and Lon would be in her behavior yet determined to follow through with the purpose of her trip—prepares to head out from her hotel room. Before she does, she opens up her purse and pulls out a folded piece of newspaper. She looks down at the article and reminds herself of the reason she’s come back to New Bern.

Noah, meanwhile, enjoys an unseasonably warm day of kayaking and working on the fencing around his property. After work, he enjoys fishing and reflecting on his life, thinking back to his childhood. He recalls how his father taught him to read poetry in order to help with a childhood stutter. He thinks back to the canoeing and camping trips of his youth and the pleasure he has always felt being alone in nature. He has always been a solitary person—the only one who ever broke through that barrier was Allie.

Noah continues thinking back over his relationship with Allie as he fishes. He remembers Fin predicting that Noah and Allie’s relationship wouldn’t work out—and how Fin, tragically, turned out to be right. Allie’s parents disapproved of Noah because he was from a different social class. Though Allie promised Noah they’d find a way to be together no matter what—and though Noah promised her their bond would never be broken—she never answered any of the letters he sent her after she left New Bern.

Just a few months after Allie departed, Noah, too left New Bern—both to get her off his mind and to look for work. The country was in the throes of the Great Depression, and Noah was only able to find work up north at a scrap yard in New Jersey run by a kindly Jewish man, Morris Goldman, who had a soft spot for Noah. Over the course of the year, Noah continued writing to Allie—but after months and months and months of silence, Noah stopped sending the letters. For eight years he worked for Goldman, and by 1940, he was managing a staff of 30 at the thriving scrap yard. Noah dated several women, but each one told him that he was too “closed off” and absent.

In December of 1941, when Noah was 26, America entered World War II and Noah enlisted in the army. While in boot camp, Noah received a letter from Goldman which entitled him to a percentage of the scrap yard, if it ever sold. After three years in North Africa and Europe, watching his friends die all around him, Noah returned to the states to find that Morris Goldman had liquidated his assets and died. Noah received a check for $70,000—his share of the business. Noah returned to New Bern and immediately bought an old plantation house he’d once promised Allie he’d fix up one day. Within a year, his father was dead.

Noah reels in his fishing line and heads up to the house. His neighbor Martha Shaw, a war widow and single mother whom Noah often helps out with repairs, has brought him some bread and biscuits. After a visit to Gus’s, Noah does some shopping at the general store and returns home, where he sits on the porch and reads poetry as dusk falls.

Meanwhile, Allie is still in her room looking at the newspaper clipping, which she first spotted three Sundays ago. When she first saw it, she went pale and began to shake. Over the last several weeks, her erratic behavior has alarmed her family and even Lon, yet Allie has blamed her moods on the stress of planning a wedding for over five hundred high-society people. After folding the clipping and putting it back in her purse, Allie takes a deep breath and heads out of the hotel. She drives through town out to the dirty roads and low country beyond, her mind flooding with memories of the summer she spent with Noah in New Bern long ago.

As Allie arrives at the house, she is taken aback by how dramatically different it looks. She spots Noah on the porch—he curiously steps off the verandah and walks toward her car. As Allie parks and opens the door, she and Noah stare at each other for a long time without moving. Allie is searching for answers—and Noah is face-to-face with “the ghost” who has come to rule his life.