Love Letters Home

Love Letters Home by Chapman Deering   450 pages

I wasn’t sure, exactly, what to make of this book when it arrived. Was it fiction or nonfiction?  And to be honest, I’m not really sure after finishing it.

In the Introduction, Deering explains that about fifteen years ago, “she found a cache of letters hidden in the attic of her family home. Her mother had died and  her father was moving into assisted living.” It’s that third person voice that made me wonder exactly what genre this book fell into. It sounded like fiction in that voice, but Deering’s signature makes it feel as if she is describing how the letters and the novel came to be.

There were more than four hundred letters, and it took the speaker/Deering three years to read and transcribe them. Ultimatey “the box contained one side of a nearly fur year correspondence.”

What Deering has created an amazing read.  While she fabricated what appears to be her mother-to-be’s side of the story, she used her father-to-be’s letters to tell the story of their romance and courtship.

Readers get to be a fly on the wall as the couple fight for their relationship as much as they are fighting for their country. Ruth LeBlanc and Jim Doughtery have been dating only a few months when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor and  he joins the Army Air Corps (forerunner to the Air Force).

The timeframe for the novel is 1942 to 1945. What I really like about this story is that how hard it was on the homefront, and the honesty of Jim’s letters. Jim encourages Ruth to have a life, to go out and have fun. Ruth tries, but the stress of their apartness make it difficult. Beisdes, most of the men have joined the service and she does love Jim with her entire being.

I was glad that Deering touched on how the homefront had grown tired of the war after three years and began to feel less than supportive of those fighting overseas. I was also fascinated to witness their fighting via letters. At times, Jim really ticked me off with his, what we call today, male chauvenstic attitude.

I was terribly disappointed when this novel ended. I want to know how life turned out for the two. Maybe Deering will write another book about Ruth and Jim. 

“Love Letters Home” receives 5 out of 5 stars in Julie’s world.