Bridges of Madison County
Robert James Waller's short 1992 novel about a four-day affair between Francesca Johnson, an Iowa farm wife, and Robert Kincaid, a National Geographic photographer who arrives to photograph the county's covered bridges while her family is away. It is framed as a recovered true story and told in deliberately heightened language. It sold in enormous numbers, was filmed with Clint Eastwood and Meryl Streep, and remains as divisive as it is popular.