The Correspondent by Virginia Evans

After reading so many excellent reviews and with a bit of time for some free reading, and seeing a great price in the Kindle store, I picked this book up. It is an epistolary novel that reveals the life of the protagonist, septuagenarian Sybil Van Antwerp. She has spent her life writing letters to friends, family members, and even her favorite authors. She has also transitioned to email when it becomes necessary. 

Letter writing is almost a lost art, but Evans manages to capture the importance of it in The Correspondent. Through her letters, Van Antwerp manages to engage the reader in a life well-lived, but with regrets, sadness, guilt and surprise. Sybil lives outside of Annapolis next door to a very attentive neighbor, Theodore. She is going blind and is mostly accepting of that, but still wants to be in control of her life. There are hints to her past life, e.g the death of her son, Gilbert, her divorce from Daan, and her job as a lawyer. It is through correspondence with her children Fiona and Felix, best friend, Rosalie that over the course of the book those fragments become a vivid picture of her life. 

She is ousted from her garden club, maintains an email chain with a man who is a representative from a genetic testing company, harbors a teenager, the son of a colleague, who has been bullied, and tries to understand a strained relationship with her daughter. Interspersed with the actual posted and emailed correspondence are fragments of a letter that is labeled "unsent." This is the most revealing of the correspondence in that it is an admission of the regrets and actions of her life that have contributed the ongoing guilt she has felt. To the reader it was heart-wrenching.

The reader meets two men who vie for the attention of Sybil. It becomes apparent that both would like a long-term relationship with her, but she denies that prospect. The reader, on the sideline, routes for her to become involved with one of them to provide companionship and love. 

One of the most interesting aspect of the novels is the inclusion at the end of most chapters what books she and her friends are reading. It was an eclectic series of titles and worthy of exploring to read. The Correspondent was a gem of book and one that is a most pleasurable read. I am glad not to have missed it.
 

So Far Gone by Jess Walter

This book has gotten a lot of very good reviews and I was pleased that Walter was one of the authors for the Pittsburgh Arts and Lectures series. So Far Gone's protagonist is Rhys Kinnick, a retired journalist, who takes to the woods and leads a very reclusive life after a major familial blowup in 2016 between him and his son-in-law. His life changed immensely when his grandchildren, Leah (13) and Asher (9) appear on the porch of his cabin in 2024. 

Rhys' daughter, Bethany, has seemingly abandoned her children and taken off. Even her husband, Shane, appears not to know where she has gone and Bethany was somewhat at odds with him because of his embracing the beliefs and practices of a right wing, religious extremist group, the Army of the Lord, a wing of the Church of the Blessed Fire. Shane had advocated moving the family to the compound known as The Rampart and had even tried to betroth Leah to the pastor's son who was nineteen. 

The children bring Rhys up-to-date with all that happened to the family in the eight years of his self-imposed exile, including the death of his ex-wife, Celia Asher was a good chess player and that evening Rhys got into his beat-up car and took him to his chess tournament in Spokane. However, they find out that the tournament is not that evening and when arriving at the abbey where the tournament was supposed to take place the children are kidnapped by Brother Dean Burris, one of the Army of the Lord members. He also breaks Rhys' jaw in the process. 

Through flashbacks and action in the present, the novel then focuses on the recovery of the children. It brings into view and motion a number of people from Rhys' past, including an old flame, Lucy Park, his retired police officer, Chuck Littlefield, and Brian and Joanie a Native American couple with whom Rhys reconciles as he asks for help in navigating some of the Native American lands around the area in an effort to find Bethany from a clue that Leah had given them. 

As the novel begins to come to a resolution, the reader is hit in the face with a WHAM bit of action. The characters are well developed in a style that is a bit unique with chapter titles What Happened to....? Rhys earns the readers' sympathy as he tries to reconnect with a world that seems to have left him behind, but Walter also adds a bit of wit and levity to the story. The themes of Christian Nationalism, the sorry state of journalism created by today's reliance on social media for news, and the abandonment of environmental protection initiatives resonate through the novel. Perhaps, Rhys foreshadows the novel in his preface in quoting Thoreau, "Not till we are lost… ‘till we have lost the world, do we begin to find ourselves.”
 

The Frozen River byAriel Lawhon

Based on an actual event, The Frozen River, takes place in Hallowell, Maine, a small village on the Kennebec River in the winter of 1789. The body of Josh Burgess is pulled from the nearly frozen river and Martha Ballard, the town's midwife, is called to exam it and give a cause of death. She notices that there are ligature marks around his neck, leading her to believe that he was hanged. However, no rope was found near or on the body. For a small town, Hallowell had it fair share of scandals and villainous men who thought they could have their way with any woman they desired. Burgess was named by the parson's wife, Rebecca Foster,  as one of two men who raped her. The other, a judge on the local court council was Joseph North. She is pregnant as a result of that rape. 

Martha's findings were disputed by Dr. Page, a new physician from Harvard, whose opinion carried more weight than hers and the judge one of the rapists dismisses the charge of murder. Martha is a strong woman and she will not be quieted. Her position as midwife for the town's women is being usurped by Page, who is stealing her patients and who has delivered a number of still births because of his practice of treating the women with laudanum.

As the novel unfolds, an trial at a higher court ensues with the same result in the failure to convict North of rape and holds Rebecca for the crime of fortification. The number of characters who come in and out of the book were confusing at time, especially since Martha and Ephraim had so many children who also had many suitors. Lawhorn weaves the story convincingly as she leaves breadcrumbs for the reader to discover exactly what has happened. At times the reader may feel that s/he is reading a chapter out of Call the Midwife, or a mystery. 

There are two themes that came across so strongly - the power of a woman and a devoted love between husband and wife.  Martha is a force to be reckoned with. She knows right from wrong and isn't afraid to fight for the right. Through flashbacks to the beginnings of her marriage to Ephraim, she is seen as a woman who learns to read and write and to become a gifted and caring midwife. She is an advocate for justice and for her family as their involvement in the crime emerges. She fights for women who have been taken advantage of and who in the Puritanical culture face shame. 

Through the flashbacks and the relationship of Martha and Ephraim, it is hard to think of another couple in literature who are so devoted to each other. Their love is evidenced in the way they care for each other, challenging the other to be their best. Ephraim expresses extreme disappointment in a decision that Martha makes about providing medication, and it causes her to be remorseful. 
 

The Frozen River is a multilayered novel that will provide readers a wonderful way to spend some hours.