The Letters

This month, I joined an on-line book club, The Hoochee Book Club. Our first book was called The Letters. It's a story about a husband and wife, Sam and Hadley West, who are estranged after the loss of their only child, their son. Sam is on a trek to Alaska, the last place their son was alive and the wife leaves their home to sort of rediscover herself. The story unfolds through a series of letters that the two write to each other. Sam, in Alaska, finding the resting place of his son's plane crash, and Hadley is in Maine where she's rented a small cottage and begins painting again. Hadley was a little mean and bitter to Sam in the beginning but became softer and lovely as the two reminisced through letters at their lives together, how they met, fell in love, the things they loved about each other and the family they had together. They also discover a secret their son had kept from them, which helps them understand a little more about their son.

I really enjoyed reading this book and love the idea of letter writing, a lost art, I'm sure. While most of the book was so very sad and even utterly melancholy, as I got to the end, I thought that the characters had to go through all they did so that they would realize just how much they loved each other and how they could heal from a devastating loss. Just like in real life, we sometimes have to go through lots of trials and valleys to get to a place where God wants us to be.

The book has two authors, Luanne Rice and Joseph Monninger so, you get the perspective of both the man and the lady. I thought this was a great book, a quick read and worth the time I spent reading it.