The Postmistress

Title: The Postmistress
Author: Sarah Blake
Genre: Historical fiction, women's lit
Source: Barnes and Noble First Look Book Club - I'm not expected to send it back.


I fell in love with this cover. When the book arrived I actually squeeled and petted the book. It has a great cover...colors, textures, all of it. Perfect.

That's where my adoration ended. I just can't get into this book. I like the idea of the story, but it just gets buried under the strikingly heavy descriptions of the war and the more-often-than-not confusing transitions between characters. I want to finish this so badly....but I just can't force myself through any more of it. I think this may be my first and last foray into the land of Barnes and Noble First Look books.


Synopsis from B&N:
The Postmistress is a sweeping novel about the loss of innocence of two extraordinary women-and of two countries torn apart by war.
On the eve of the United States's entrance into World War II in 1940, Iris James, the postmistress of Franklin, a small town on Cape Cod, does the unthinkable: She doesn't deliver a letter. In London, American radio gal Frankie Bard is working with Edward R. Murrow, reporting on the Blitz. One night in a bomb shelter, she meets a doctor from Cape Cod with a letter in his pocket, a letter Frankie vows to deliver when she returns from Germany and France, where she is to record the stories of war refugees desperately trying to escape.
The residents of Franklin think the war can't touch them- but as Frankie's radio broadcasts air, some know that the war is indeed coming. And when Frankie arrives at their doorstep, the two stories collide in a way no one could have foreseen. The Postmistress is an unforgettable tale of the secrets we must bear, or bury. It is about what happens to love during wartime, when those we cherish leave. And how every story-of love or war-is about looking left when we should have been looking right.