Women's Letters

WOMEN’S LETTERS: AMERICA FROM THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR TO THE PRESENT: Lisa Grunwald, editor: Dial Press: Nonfiction: 832 pages.

This marvelous book allows the reader, whether they read two pages or all eight hundred and thirty-two, an intimate, touching, and intensely interesting view of events great and small through the private correspondence of women of America. The glimpses of life events through the eyes of the obscure and the famous illuminate history in a way that no carefully composed historical narrative can. Probably no historical narrative has even tried to capture the essence of women’s lives the way these letters do.

The letters can be read in chronological order but since the letters have no relation to each other except that they are written by women, there is no reason not to just open the book at random and read. A widow writes to Eleanor Roosevelt asking for a coat, Louisa May Alcott instructs her publisher about the title of her new book Little Women, a nurse during the Vietnam War writes to her family about conditions at an evacuation hospital in Vietnam. I can’t help but feel that this is the best, most interesting way to learn about history. Each letter is prefaced by an introduction that gives the context of the events surrounding the letter’s composition.

If you see this book on the New Book display at the Provo City Library, don’t hesitate to pick it up and read even if you only have five minutes. You will probably find that you want to read for a much longer time.

SH