In the epistolary tradition of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society and 84, Charing Cross Road, Jessica Brockmole's Letters from Skye is a captivating debut novel.
When Elspeth Dunn, a young Scottish poet living on the remote Isle of Skye, receives a fan letter from a cheeky college student in Illinois, she never expects it to change her life. But though her correspondence with David Graham provides a bright spot in the shadow of World War I, it has disastrous consequences for her family. When David volunteers as an ambulance driver in France, Elspeth remains on Skye, but continues to write--and worry.
Years later, after an air raid on her Edinburgh house in 1940, Elspeth disappears, leaving her daughter, Margaret, holding a yellowed letter addressed to "Sue" and a few clues to her mother's (and her own) history. Margaret begins a cross-country search into Elspeth's past, chronicling her journey in letters to the RAF pilot she loves.
In two parallel series of letters, the book evokes the rugged landscape of Skye, the cosmopolitan bustle of London and the privations of army camps in northern France. Despite the strains of wartime, family worries and love gone wrong, Brockmole's characters write with warmth and wit, sending letters and telegrams across the Atlantic and the English Channel. While the letters trace the love stories of two young couples, they also offer reflections on family, duty and the perennial question of whom we love. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams