The Letters by 
Luanne Rice and Joseph Monnniger
Hardcover, 199 pages
Published         2008          by Bantam
My Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
 
Blurb:
Is there any mystery greater than those we love the most?  
In this remarkable collaboration, New York Times bestselling  author Luanne Rice and Joseph Monninger combine their unique talents to  create a powerfully moving novel of an estranged husband and wife  through a series of searching, intimate letters. By way of a  correspondence so achingly real you’ll forget it’s fiction, they trace  the history of a love affair and of a family before, and after, the  moment that changed the course of two people’s journey forever. 
Sam  and Hadley West are both trying in their own ways to survive after the  unthinkable loss of their only son in Alaska. For Sam, a sports  journalist, acceptance means an arduous trek by dogsled across the bleak  and beautiful arctic wilderness to find the place where Paul died. For  Hadley, it means renting a benignly haunted, salt-soaked cottage off the  Maine coast where she begins to paint again. 
Now, at opposite  ends of the country, waiting for their divorce to be finalized, they  begin to exchange letters by post, missives filled with longing and  truths they’ve never before voiced, as they recall their marriage—its  magic moments and its challenges—and begin to rediscover the reasons  they fell in love in the first place. 
As Sam risks his life to  reach the remote crash site, Hadley begins an equally hazardous inner  journey to a rendezvous with the mad grief of a mother’s heart. At the  place where all else is lost, they will meet again….
MY THOUGHTS:
My sister picked up this book randomly at a bookstore one day. I borrowed it from her. And I really loved it.
Two authors have co-written this novel, and yet it is seamless. It is a mature story about an estranged couple who are moving towards rediscovering each other all over again. Loss of their only child changes everything they had together, love and happiness.
In a modern era of gadgets, age old means of communication through letters become therapeutic to accept their son's tragic death and pick up the broken pieces of their marriage.
Lovely novel. Lovely writing. I recommend it to anyone who is interested to read a mature adult love story.
