An epistolary novel of a life told in letters. From 2012 to 2022, retired lawyer Sybil Van Antwerp writes from her Annapolis desk — to her brother Felix, her best friend Rosalie, her adult children Bruce and Fiona, authors she admires, and one person who never receives what she writes. As her eyesight fails and old grief over her son Gilbert resurfaces, correspondence becomes the only map she trusts of who she has been.
“Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle. . . . Isn’t there something wonderful in that, to think that a story of one’s life is preserved in some way, that this very letter may one day mean something, even if it is a very small thing, to someone?”
