The Postmistress

by Sarah Blake

Book Overview

Experience World War 2 through the eyes of two very different women in this captivating New York Times bestseller by the author of The Guest Book . "A beautifully written, thought-provoking... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0399156194
• ISBN13: 9780399156199
• Release Date: February 2010
• Publisher: Amy Einhorn Books
• Length: 326 Pages
• Weight: 1.25 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 6.5" x 9.5"
• Age Range: 18 years and up
• Grade Range: Postsecondary and higher

Customer Reviews

London during world war ll , and also taking place in a small town off Cape Cod, Massachusetts.

This story will have you under its spell from the very beginning. The Author Sarah Blake writes so beautifully....almost in a poetic kind of sense...that in every sentence that she describes... the beach, the ocean, the dunes, the winds, you feel as you can smell, hear and feel the surroundings. Not with just the beach of course, but with everthing...that she talks about...the whole war experiences...the sirens, the blasts from bombs, the buildings collapsing, windows and glass shattering...the smoke of the bombs..everything is written so explicitly...you are taken there. The story its self... left me feeling Very Sad ! It's not a fairy tale happy ending. It's TRUE to life horrors of war, the bombing, the Blitz in London, to the fate of the refugees as they are running for their lives trying to leave the countries where Jews are being persecuted, and counting themselves the lucky ones to be able to have the proper papers, to have a sponsor in another country...to pure luck to getting a seat on the trains out. The Story revolves around London and the war, and the safety of everyday life in small town America...where people carry on day in and day out, and don't have a clue about what's going on in Europe! The TRUE going on's ..the real life horrors of war..and all the casualties and loss of life.The main Characters and basically the whole story are the ones living on Cape Cod, the background is the war. It is a unforgettable story of how three women's life seem to touch one anothers, the secrets they keep, which to tell.. or bury. Frankie Bard, the broadcaster from America, who is coming into people's homes nightly telling in details the absolute horrors of the war.Hoping she gets it right...to make America and Americans sit up and pay attention. Iris Frank the Postmistress, who believes it is her job to pass along the news of love and sorrow that letters carry. The letters she delivers day in and day out..She plays a major part in the story. Finally Emma Fitch who is married to Will, the doctor in their small town. Emma's husband, Will losses a patient during childbirth, though no fault of his, takes it personally, and decides to go to London to help out, with their need for Doctors. She counts the days till he safely returns, his letters being a life line to her loneliness. She loves him dearly, and misses him so much..All three women eventually are brought together by fate, and how their lives are touched by each other..Wonderful Story..more than 5 stars..worthy...definitely a MUST read !! It will have you thinking ...deeply thinking about the different parts of life, lies we tell to protect others from the truth, to protecting ourselves, as to not acknowledge what we can't bear, that while we are alive ..leading normal lives others are dying in wars. Excellent, Excellent story !

disappointing ending

I don't want to give away any spoilers. I liked the story although it seemed to move a little too slowly for me. The only way I can describe it is to compare maybe about the last third of the book about the characters in Franklin as moving along like a lazy, hot, summer day. The ending almost made me angry. Frankie had heard one more story of someone's life beyond those she had recorded. I wholeheartedly disagree with her choice. Another final scenario pulled at the heartstrings too. Not a book with happy endings.

One of the best this year.

Being a public librarian I get to purchase and read the best and the worst books in print. The Postmistress is one of the best I've read this year. The characters seem real and you can either like them or not, but Ms. Blake has written them so we can do that. I did not want to put it down and I didn't want it to end, but when it did the ending was satisfying. I will recommend this book to all of my adult patrons!

The Postmistress

What a delightful read. After winter months of reading Patterson and mystery books, this was one I just couldn't put down. Even though I'm barely old enough to remember WWII, memories of listening to the radio with my Mom popped back vividly.Several life stories wrapped into one.

This book is a "keeper"

I was sad when this book ended. It is a combination of a history, and the thoughts and actions of famous and not so famous people which brings us back to a not so distant time. It reminds of how some of the problems we deal with now started. This story takes place in pre World War II London and Europe. However, much of it also takes place on Cape Cod in a thinly disguised town which I immediately recognized as Provincetown on the tip of the Cape. This, by the way, is not the Provincetown of our times. Before World War II, this was an ordinary Cape town whose only claim to fame was that artists and writers such as Eugene O'Neil, Louise Brooks and Jack Reed and other rising young stars of the literatii spent their summers in the converted fishermen's shacks which lined the dunes around the town. This town and the Cape itself make up one of the spots in the United States which is nearest to Europe. There is a spot in Orleans, MA which is labled as the site of one of the original Marconi stations. I have passed it by a hundred or more times, but, until I read this story, I never realized how important that siting was to the success of the transmissions which came off the Cape. The lead characters in this story are Frankie Bard, who, at the beginning of the story, is working with Edward R. Murrow as a broadcast reporter during the London Blitz. There is also Iris James who is the Postmistress of the title and Emma Fitch, a doctor's wife who is left alone, at home, when her husband, driven by a personal tragedy and the broadcasts of Frankie, leaves the Cape and volunteers as a doctor in a hospital in London. One other main character, besides the doctor is Harry Vale whose memories of World War I cause him to set up a coastwatchers service in the tower of the Provincetown Tower. The sounds of Frankie and Murrow's broadcast are heard loud and clear on the Cape and the warnings these people were trying to impart to the United States are heard easily. The horror and insecurity of life in London, death from one step to the next, leads Frankie to ask for an assignment to enter Nazi occupied Europe to interview the streams of refugees (mostly Jewish) who are trying to cross Europe to get to Portugal which was the last unoccupied country and open port on the continent. What she learns from talking to these people and some of the things she sees unhinges her to the point where she quickly returns to the safety of the United States carrying her notes and recording disks with her. The author explains that the recording machine is an anachromism, but her repeated playing of these voices of the refugees reminds Frankie how fleeting life can be and how quickly stolen from us. She also has to deliver a message from Dr. Fitch to his wife. Her arrival on the Cape and the interactions of these three women and the changes which these relationships have on their futures make up the last half or so of the novel. This is not a romance novel. It is an e

We tell each other stories

Sarah Blake does a wonderful job in capturing the period of history just before America enters WWII. She brings remembrances of women wearing garters and girdles and the bombs falling on the hedgerows of England. There is the description of how the young feel that everyone in the town is watching them, and in a small town they probably are. There is a poetic quality in Blake's telling of those that were in London during the Blitz. She captures the spirit perfectly of that and those who sat close to their radios listening to Edward R. Murrow`s reporting. I have talked to some who lived through the Blitz and when I read this I could hear their voices again. Her grasp and use of the facts is so historically correct; i.e. "There had been so many sensational and false stories about the Germans in WWI, much of the press was hesitant about stories in the beginning of WWII". If you remember that it will explain much of what one of the characters, Frankie felt and her frustration in her reporting. The story moves smoothly back and forth between England and those left behind in the small Cape Cod town of Franklin. Even though this is a novel, from looking at Blake's notes it is well researched and she is especially good at presenting and remembering that history is the people, especially the people on the edge of the major events - those left behind. This is a story not really of the soldiers, but of those who are in the war as noncombatants. They are battered emotionally, showing the hidden memories and fears of losing those you love. The feelings that someone has, if they have ever had someone leave for war or duty and in your heart wanted them to stay are captured perfectly. Sometimes the writing becomes choppy and awkward, jumping from one person to another, or the wording hard to understand: "he would be the best doctor because his probe need not be blind"; but it is not enough to give up on reading this book. What you will find as you read will be that special drawing into the character's lives and this period of time. That is a special talent that is not found as often as I would wish in books I read.

4.5 Stars: Telling a story through edges: the voice of WWII and women's lives

In 1940, the lives of three women could not be more different as war rages in Europe. Iris James, postmistress of Franklin, Massachusetts, believes in order and details. She takes great pride in her work. All communications in the town come through her. The whole system works because of the neat efficient system and the trust. She keeps all the secrets of the residents, but one day, she breaks with everything she has ever believed, slipping a letter into her pocket. Emma Trask, wife of the town's doctor Will Fitch, listens to all the radio broadcasts from London with her husband. When a tragedy provokes a change in her husband and a determination to go over to Europe, Emma guards herself against the tides of war raging across a distant ocean. In London, Frankie Bard, works with Edward R. Murrow. Frankie listens to Murrow's story advice, yet her spirit chafes against the all the strictures and protocol imposed on her. Feisty, fearless and somewhat brash, she wants to get out the truth and stir her listeners to action. In 1941, Frankie rides the trains out of Germany, reporting on the war, listening to the voices of the so-called refugees. As she sees the war unfolding from a different perspective, her whole idea about the story itself changes. In THE POSTMISTRESS, Sarah Blake looks at World War II through the eyes of three distinct women all connected through means of private and public media. In many ways, THE POSTMISTRESS itself follows Frankie's conception of a news story as story and herein lies the beauty of the novel. Sarah Blake's novel does not follow the traditional concepts of a novel. THE POSTMISTRESS tells the story of World War II through the edges, in the lives of the three women and the events of their lives, often events that even seem unrelated to the larger scene playing out in the world. Indeed, the emotional impact of the story builds as Frankie stops trying to tell the truth of the war and listens to the voices of those around her. The "truth" of the war often emerges in the edges, in those stories told and unspoken by the press and even the characters to some extent. Although Sarah Blake draws on the history and historical figures of the times, THE POSTMISTRESS is not a historical novel filled with date and details from the history books. The reader will not find all the horrific details of the Holocaust or the London Blitz and yet, in telling the story through the edges of war scene, THE POSTMISTRESS allows the reader's imagination to enter the story. With the copious amount of World War II history and fiction published, readers undoubtedly are more than familiar with the main story of the War, and yet, THE POSTMISTRESS brings a freshness to the story. For this reader, THE POSTMISTRESS, is one of the first to tell the story of the trains from a viewpoint that truly engages imagination and emotion in both the details of individuals, sometimes even the characters for whom only a name and place is known,