Young, ambitious and talented, Phoebe Adler is slowly building a career for herself as a New York television screenwriter in the 1950s. Her work doesn't just pay the bills: it represents the next rung on the ladder to success. It also pays for her sister's medical care at an expensive sanitarium. But when the House Un-American Activities Committee begins blacklisting writers and directors, Phoebe receives a subpoena and must make the split-second decision to abandon her life in Greenwich Village and flee to London. In her second novel, Red Letter Days, Sarah-Jane Stratford tells Phoebe's story, and traces its intersection with that of fellow exiled American Hannah Wolfson.
Stratford (Radio Girls) has created a cast of strong women, from Phoebe and her whip-smart sister, Mona, to Hannah Wolfson's cadre of American exiles and their colleagues in London. A successful writer and director, Hannah has set up her own production company, creating a new take on The Adventures of Robin Hood with a roster of entirely blacklisted writers (all working under aliases). Once Phoebe arrives in London, she lands a job as Hannah's script supervisor by day, and spends her evenings working on a script of her own for Robin Hood. Meanwhile, both women are dealing with romantic complications and trying to avoid the attention of the FBI, which reaches across the ocean in ways they didn't expect.
Well plotted and moving, with witty characters and unnervingly timely, Red Letter Days is smart, satisfying historical fiction at its best. --Katie Noah Gibson, blogger at Cakes, Tea and Dreams