The Postmistress
by Sarah Blake
336 pages· 2010
About
Those who carry the truth sometimes bear a terrible weight . . .
It is 1940 and half the world is living through the horror of the Second World War, but America still believes it is safe from the bloodshed.
In Franklin, a small town on Cape Cod, Iris James is the postmistress and she firmly believes that her job is to keep and deliver people's secrets, to pass along the news of love and sorrow that letters carry. But one day she does the unthinkable: she doesn't deliver a letter and instead slips it into her pocket.
Every night Iris and Emma Fitch, the young doctor's wife, tune in to Frankie Bard's radio dispatches, anguished bulletins sent from the air-raid shelters and Underground stations of London during the Blitz.
One night in a bomb shelter, Frankie meets a doctor from Cape Cod with a letter in his pocket, a letter Frankie vows to deliver.
In the last desperate days of the summer of 1941 Frankie leaves a traumatised London, rides the trains out of Germany and records the stories of refugees desperately trying to escape. The townspeople of Franklin listen and the war seems a life-time away, but Iris and Emma, unable to tear themselves away from Frankie's voice, know better.
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story of love or war is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
It is 1940 and half the world is living through the horror of the Second World War, but America still believes it is safe from the bloodshed.
In Franklin, a small town on Cape Cod, Iris James is the postmistress and she firmly believes that her job is to keep and deliver people's secrets, to pass along the news of love and sorrow that letters carry. But one day she does the unthinkable: she doesn't deliver a letter and instead slips it into her pocket.
Every night Iris and Emma Fitch, the young doctor's wife, tune in to Frankie Bard's radio dispatches, anguished bulletins sent from the air-raid shelters and Underground stations of London during the Blitz.
One night in a bomb shelter, Frankie meets a doctor from Cape Cod with a letter in his pocket, a letter Frankie vows to deliver.
In the last desperate days of the summer of 1941 Frankie leaves a traumatised London, rides the trains out of Germany and records the stories of refugees desperately trying to escape. The townspeople of Franklin listen and the war seems a life-time away, but Iris and Emma, unable to tear themselves away from Frankie's voice, know better.
The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story of love or war is about looking left when we should have been looking right.
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