The Postmistress

In 1940, Iris James is the postmistress of Franklin, a small town on the Massachusetts coast. Over the years she has learned far more about her neighbors than she would ever repeat, and she takes it as her duty to carry other people's secrets safely from one hand to another. Then she does something she never imagined she could. She pockets a letter, reads it, and keeps it from the person it was meant for.

Across the Atlantic, Frankie Bard is a young American reporter who broadcasts alongside Edward R. Murrow. Night after night, German bombs fall on London, and Frankie's reports try to make listeners back home take notice of what is happening. Many in Franklin believe the war is too far away to reach them. Iris and Frankie both understand otherwise.

Sarah Blake sets a town that clings to its innocence against a world torn apart by violence, and puts at the center of it two women whose work is to bring people news. Each of them comes to a moment when she cannot do it. Their stories, along with those of ordinary people swept up in events far larger than themselves, raise questions about how stories get told, what it costs to hear them, and how war makes itself felt even in the quiet routines of daily life.

Sarah Blake is also the author of The Guest Book.