The Postmistress by Sarah Blake

Is it possible that sometimes withholding or shading the truth is better than delivering devastating news the recipient is incapable of surviving? Iris James, postmistress of a small New England town, faces that decision when she does what seems unthinkable for such a dedicated public servant – she doesn’t deliver a letter. Public sentiment is still strongly anti-war in 1940, when only a few individuals see America’s entry into the conflict as inevitable. Radio reporter Frankie Bard rushes to England to be part of the “excitement” there, only to be frustrated by the continual censorship of her stories about the displacement of Jews in Europe. Her visceral broadcasts about London’s stoic endurance of the random horrors of nightly German bombing bring the war to the living rooms of Iris’ small town. Blake creates haunting portraits of a devastated London and a reluctant America where war’s effects are beginning to trickle through. Her nuanced characters and vivid recreation of a place in time will delight those readers who made The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society a book club favorite.

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Recommended by Sarah Redman