Book Blurb:
As the Great War rages, an independent young woman struggles to sustain love—and life—through the power of words.It’s 1917 and America is on the brink of World War I. After Hensley Dench’s father is forced to resign from the New York Times for his anti-war writings, she finds herself expelled from the life she loves and the future she thought she would have. Instead, Hensley is transplanted to New Mexico, where her father has taken a job overseeing a gold mine. Driven by loneliness, Hensley hijacks her father’s correspondence with Charles Reid, a young American medic with whom her father plays chess via post. Hensley secretly begins her own exchange with Charles, but looming tragedy threatens them both, and—when everything turns against them—will their words be enough to beat the odds?
My Review: 4 stars
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Here’s another fabulous example of me picking up a book due to its title and cover and getting lucky! Note: this is not a good way to choose books but this time, it was an excellent choice. This is a literary romance. The author uses rich language and a combination of third person and epistolary writing to tell this beautiful love story during WW1, which is a welcome change to the bounty of WW2 books that are popular. Each of the main protagonists is coming of age in a time of not only political unrest but also within their own families. Both have an “issue” that is being withheld from one another which gave a good amount of tension. The minor characters that we met in the circus and in New Mexico were perfectly placed and offered the book some nice elements of transformation, both literally and figuratively. For those of you have read The Garden Of Letters, there is some very unusual coincedences between these two books. I’d love the authors of each of these to read the other’s work.
I look forward to reading more from this author. Well done!
Quotes I Liked:
If not your brother, somebody else’s brother. They do not recruit soldiers from some reserve of the unloved and unattached.”
-“Morality is not negotiable, Hensley. Unleashing a war machine in order to end a war? An absurd Olympics of semantic excuses. Ludicrous.”
-“Despite her best efforts, she’s still just a girl whose heart has been broken.”
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