Read Review: The Letters

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.

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