Letter to My Daughter: Review and Giveaway

Think about the letters you've saved over the years. Are they love letters? Are they the letters you got from home during your first summer away at camp? Do you have a box full of letters from best friends, full of events and compliments, or acceptances to schools or for jobs? You probably saved these letters because they touched your emotions when you first read them. Chances are good that they still affect you when you reread them.

An epistolary novel is a fictional book written as a series of documents, usually letters, although diary or journal entries, newspaper clippings, and other documents are sometimes used. In recent times, electronic "documents" such as email and even blogs have also come into use. The word 'epistolary' comes from the Latin word epistola, meaning a letter. The very first epistolary novel may have been the Spanish Prison of Love (Cárcel de amor) (c.1485) by Diego de San Pedro. Throughout the years, there have been countless books written in epistolary form, which became popular as a genre in the 18th century, fell largely out of use in the late part of that century, and then became popular again. Even Jane Austen tried her hand at epistolary writing, with her novella, Lady Susan, and Pride and Prejudice, which contains many letters, may have originally been intended as an epistolary novel called "First Impressions". Recently I read two epistolary books, The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society by Mary Ann Schaffer and Annie Barrows (which I reviewed in epistolary form), and West From Home by Laura Ingalls Wilder (which I also reviewed). Epistolary novels often feel a bit more intimate, more revealing, and more passionate to me than regular novels, and I looked forward to reading a new book in this genre, Letter to My Daughter by George Bishop, published in 2010.

Letter to My Daughter is written as a letter from a distraught mother, Laura, to her daughter, Liz, on the eve of her fifteenth birthday. Liz has left home in the middle of the night in her mother's car after a fight with her. As Laura anxiously awaits her daughter's return, she writes a letter to Liz about her own past and the secrets she has kept hidden. In it, she reveals how at fifteen she fell in love with a Cajun boy, Tim Prejean, who was two years older than her. Her parents strongly disapproved of her relationship with Tim, and sent Laura away to a boarding school run by nuns, the Sacred Heart Academy in Baton Rogue. Tim has enlisted in the army during the era of the Vietnam War, and he and Laura continue their forbidden romance through letters in this coming-of-age story.

Imaginative and affecting, I was transfixed and transported by descriptions in Letter to My Daughter of rural Louisiana and could easily envision "the sticks" where "small houses stood scattered here and there among the trees" in a place with "dirt roads, dirt yards, and dirt gardens". The beauty of this book is in the details and the way the author captures feelings on paper (Tim's father, who lives in a camping trailer in the woods, is described as "desperately hospitable", offering can after can of RC Cola to Liz). Although it's short, the story is full of power and emotion. Like a treasured letter, this is a book to read and reread. It would be a very good choice for mother/daughter book clubs, and may even inspire some mothers to write letters to their own children--about things that are important but difficult to express face-to-face.

After reading Letter to My Daughter, I was curious about something and asked the author a couple of questions:

Why did you write Letter to My Daughter from the point of view of a woman, Liz's mother? What "advantages" and/or "disadvantages" did this give you as a writer?

Here is his reply:

Dear Suko's Notebook,

Thanks for hosting me here on your blog. Lots of readers have wondered about the female point of view in my novel Letter to My Daughter.

A few years ago I was working in India, and at the end of my job, I took a camel safari in the desert. I went to sleep in my tent one night, and I dreamed this whole novel, beginning to end. In my dream, the story was clearly told from the point of view of the mother. I heard the woman's voice, even. The odd thing is that I don't know anyone quite like Laura, the narrator in the story. She's not based on anyone in real life.

So I went into the novel with a strong sense of the voice and the story. Still, it took some time to overcome my doubts about writing from a woman's point of view. But eventually I realized that it wasn't all that different from a man's point of view. The big emotions--fear, love, hate, jealousy--are all the same no matter who you are. The challenge is in getting the details right--what a teenage girl sees when she looks at a boy she admires, for example. Things like this took some imagining. Happily, women who've read the novel seem to think I got it right.

~George Bishop

Fascinating! George, I enjoyed reading your answer in epistolary form.

Wonderful news! Random House is offering one copy of Letter to My Daughter as a giveaway (U.S./Canada).

• To enter the giveaway for this book, simply leave a comment.
• For another chance at winning, become a follower of this blog, or let me know that you're already a follower, or that you subscribe in Google Reader.
• For an additional chance, post about this contest on your blog, Facebook, or Twitter.
• For yet another chance, mention an epistolary book that you've enjoyed reading.

Enter by 5 PM PDT on Wednesday, June 2. One winner will be selected randomly and announced on Thursday, June 3. Good luck!



Special thanks to Lisa from TLC and Random House for sending me this book. For more reviews of this book, please visit the other stops on TLC's blog tour for Letter to My Daughter.

Women in Lit

Laura Ingalls Wilder, Rose Wilder Lane, and other women have fortunately been "allowed" to be writers (and therefore a part of history as well as recorders of it), although so many women didn't have the opportunity to learn to read and write, something we take for granted today in the U.S.A.. I won't even get into the scarcity of education for women in other countries, but just say that it's atrocious.

When I was in high school, I took a class called Women in Literature, and I probably should dedicate this post to my teacher, Ms. S.. She gave me a lot of encouragement regarding my ideas and writing. I was as quiet as a mouse in the class, feeling far too shy to participate. I never raised my hand. I couldn't. I was painfully shy, and must have turned crimson when called on. Once, I had to give an oral presentation, and stood in front of the class, panic stricken, sick to my stomach, knees shaking, completely enervated. It was awful! I was awful! Ms. S. told me I had "low energy" during the presentation. However, I always did well on my essays about literature by Virginia Woolf and other famous women authors. My classmates were surprised that I actually had a voice, not spoken but written, because I was so quiet. These days, I find that I can (usually) talk up a storm with just about anyone, but I still remember my shy days, and think of Ms. S., who believed in me.


Photo of Laura Ingalls Wilder from Wikipedia

Pioneers

The Cowardly Lion in the Wizard of Oz sought courage and went to great lengths to find it. It seems to me that both Laura Ingalls Wilder and her daughter, Rose Wilder Lane, must have been born with a large amount of courage. Even though these women were not expected to do much outside of traditional work, both chose to write, and were independent, adventurous, and above all else perhaps, courageous. They wrote because it was important to them, and they also performed their more traditional roles as well as wives and mothers. In West from Home, along with vivid descriptions of the World's Fair, San Francisco, and other sights, Laura gives her husband, Manly, precise directions about managing this and that on the farm. The farm stays in her thoughts and letters throughout her trip to San Francisco and the World's Fair. Laura does not forget her responsibility to Manly and the farm. Laura and Rose, a mother-daughter team, were "super women" of the early 1900's! Reading their letters is a joy, and foretells the achievements of the future--Laura writing the Little House books, and Rose editing them. These courageous women captured the essence of life in frontier America in nine classic volumes. They were true pioneers.

(P.S. I keep these "English lessons" short so they won't get too boring! I'm interested in your thoughts, and would like to turn this into conversations rather than essays. Can't relate to Little House on the Prairie type stories? This is our history! Perhaps I yearn for simpler times. . . .)

Writer's Block

A case of dreaded "writer's block" is not what prevented me from posting earlier today. I've been gone the whole day, with only a few minutes to start a post (to then be finished after 10 pm). However, I've wondered what I'll do when writer's block does strike. What's the best advice to follow when ideas and words are few and far between? In West from Home, Laura's daughter, Rose, a journalist for the San Francisco Bulletin, writes to her mother to persuade her to make the trip west to San Francisco. She suggests that the trip will be good specifically for Laura's writing:

"I think that by getting away from it all for awhile, and playing around with a bunch of people who are writing and drawing and otherwise being near-artists, you will get an entirely new viewpoint on things there, and be able to see a lot of new things to write when you go back."
~West From Home, Rose and Laura Ingalls Wilder

So you have Laura's daughter, also a writer, encouraging her mother to take the trip west to San Francisco in order to aid her writing career. Two points are important here, the change in scenery and experiences, and being with other creative people. This is nothing radical, but it's well expressed, and the trip did seem to ignite Laura's creativity, almost instantly, as she wrote many letters, full of detail, which are still brimming with vitality today. And, of course, Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote the Little House series of books in the years that followed her trip!

How do you nurture your creative muse? (Why aren't you commenting--got writer's block?)

Laura's Letters

Laura Ingalls Wilder promises to be her husband's eyes as she rides the train from Missouri to San Francisco in 1915 to visit with her daughter, Rose, and attend the great World's Fair, called the Panama-Pacific Exposition (to celebrate the completion of the canal through Panama). Her words, written with a soft pencil on plain paper, paint a picture for us as well. An extremely prolific letter writer, she describes everything to Manly in great detail, and even writes letters to him while on the train! After arriving in San Francisco Laura rests, then sees the Pacific Ocean for the first time:

"At Land's End I had my first view of the Pacific Ocean. To say it is beautiful does not express it. It is simply beyond words. The water is such a deep wonderful blue and the sound of the waves breaking on the beach and their whisper as they flow back is something to dream about."
~West From Home, Laura Ingalls Wilder

And, after wading:

"The salt water tingled my feet and made them feel so good all the rest of the day, and just think, the same water that bathes the shores of China and Japan came clear across the ocean and bathed my feet. In other words, I have washed my feet in the Pacific Ocean."
~West From Home, Laura Ingalls Wilder

Laura's very impressed by San Francisco and the abundance of beauty she finds everywhere, described in West From Home.  She even says it's almost too much for her!  Her husband did not travel with her because the farm needed tending, but Laura shares her adventures with Manly and with us through her descriptive letters.   She was a gifted writer and an incidental historian.

West From Home

Today I finished The Catcher in the Rye! I could then begin West from Home with a clear conscience (one book at a time). Like Holden in The Catcher in the Rye, who yearns for a more innocent world, I'm somewhat relieved to now read about a world more innocent and promising. Don't get me wrong, The Catcher in the Rye is an incredible book--it's boundless honesty is very engaging--but I'm eager for something more uplifting.

I spent nearly an hour outside with West From Home, something I can't normally do during the week but today I was very lucky. It was great to sit out in the sun. Even though I had a small basal cell skin cancer removed almost two years ago, I'm no solar-phobe. I still believe that some sun is beneficial for Vitamin D production (and who knows what else). With my hat and sunglasses on I sat out in a sunny spot with my book and it was so pleasant! By the fragrant orange tree is my favorite place to sit, but unfortunately the bees agree with me, so I had to move away a bit.

West From Home is a compilation of the letters that author Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote to her journalist daughter, Rose, and to Laura's husband, Almanzo, affectionately called, "Manly". Rose's letters to her mom, who's called "Bessie" and "Mama Bess", are also part of this collection.

Choices

Greetings! Lest you think I'm some kind of simpleton, I read books other than those written for children. (Although I did just read Little House on the Prairie, by Laura Ingalls Wilder, and LOVED it, especially the descriptions of how Pa built that snug little house.) So what else will I talk about in my blog? It will probably evolve into something naturally as time goes on--I'm not sure what-- but I want to keep writing and recording my thoughts. One thing's for sure, while I may talk about certain books, I' ll never tell you which books to read; I dislike it when people tell me to read a certain book, even if it IS a good one. I don't usually read bestsellers when they are "hot". I prefer to make my own choices, and NOT choose what's being hyped at the moment. So, I resist, I rebel, in my own quiet way. I browse the book stores, the "real" ones and the virtual ones, and venture to the library. I skim book reviews, to learn about new books, and for clues and insights to aid my choices. I take my time choosing what I 'll read. More often than not, I'm surprised at how much I end up enjoying a particular book I chose to read.

As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments.