The Postmistress

Frankie Bard is a young journalist at the height of her career when she finds herself in London during the Blitz, walking the streets and finding the stories which she is tasked with reporting objectively. An ocean away, in the small (fictional) town of Franklin on the tip of Cape Cod, Iris James works as the postmistress. Dedicated to her job, she believes that order and rules will keep everyone safe. Iris’s only risk in life is in love as she begins to envision a future with Harry Vale who spends hours high in the tower of the town hall, searching the waters for German U-boats. Also living in Franklin is Emma, newly wedded to the town’s doctor, Will. America has yet to enter the war raging in Europe and no one can imagine that show more they could possibly be in danger. But for each character, the war will touch their lives.

The Postmistress seesaws back and forth from Europe to America. When a routine child birthing goes horribly wrong, Will decides to go to London, hoping to make a difference. He leaves behind Emma who walks each day to the post office to pick up Will’s letters and leave her own to find their way back to him. Meanwhile Frankie reports the news from London – news which touches the people of Franklin, and which, for many, is too much for them to hear. As the Blitz continues with bombs falling nightly on London, Frankie begs her boss to send her into France where it is rumored that Jewish people are being rounded up. When her wish is granted, the war suddenly becomes very personal to Frankie.

Surely God ought to look down and see that one part of the story had been separated from the other, and find a way, somehow, to put them side by side. How could He stand these gaps, these enormous valleys of silence? And Europe was full of people vanishing into this quiet. – from The Postmistress, page 218 -

For Iris, a woman who has always prided herself on delivering the mail faithfully, there comes a moment when a letter arrives which she chooses to keep undelivered. She decides instead, to keep watch, to take care, to safeguard another from harm.

The Postmistress is historical fiction, but it is so much more. This is not your typical war story – instead it tells the individual stories which slide around the edges of the war.

Those tiny red lights in the dark going forward and moving away, those single Lucky Strikes, that’s what it was to be human. We lived and died, all of us – lucky strikes. Single lights and voices in the dark. – from The Postmistress, page 165 -

I found myself mesmerized by this novel which examines the very human need to shield ourselves and those we love from horror. While America sat isolated across an ocean, tens of thousands of people were being rounded up, murdered, and imprisoned – and yet that story was one which went largely unreported in the early years of WWII. When Frankie Bard decides to capture the voices of the Jews riding the trains through Europe, she is stunned by their stories. She is overwhelmed that for many of these people, she will never know what happens. The weight of this knowledge silences her – and she becomes a journalist who can no longer tell the story and deliver the news.

Some stories don’t get told. Some stories you hold on to. To stand and watch and hold it in your arms was not cowardice. To look straight at the beast and feel its breath on your flanks and not to turn – one could carry the world that way. – from The Postmistress, page 342 -

What I found most memorable about this book – apart from the poignant, beautifully crafted writing – was how the message it delivers is as current today as it was in the early 1940s. The character of Frankie keeps telling everyone “Pay attention.” Life itself depends on this for one of the characters, but in the larger picture what Frankie is saying is to take notice, learn from our mistakes, sit up and be aware, don’t look the other way. Who among us does not wish to shut off the nightly news when it gets a little too raw or violent? Don’t we sometimes want to deny others’ suffering lest it make us feel that we must do something instead of nothing? Throughout history wars have been fought, human rights have been disregarded, and the suffering of others has been buried beneath political messages. What Blake so aptly does in her novel is put a human face to the horror of war and to remind us that looking away has consequences.

The Postmistress has been getting rave reviews everywhere – and they are well deserved. Blake’s writing is sensitive, observant, and filled with the simple truths of what makes us human. I loved this book. I loved its tempo, its characters, and its message. I found nothing between its pages to criticize. Readers of historical fiction as well as literary fiction will be swept away by The Postmistress.

Highly recommended. show less

On the surface, the novel revolves around the three female protagonists: the postmaster Iris, the doctor’s young wife Emma, both living in a small American town Franklin on Cape Cod, and the American radio journalist Frankie, reporting on the Blitz from London. The year is 1940. Nazis are tearing Europe apart, while in a small town, America, everything is status-quo.
The book blurb coyly states that it’s a story of undelivered letter. This is a blatant lie, created by a marketing department to attract readers. But it attracts the wrong readers. The tale of a misplaced letter is just one little wrinkle, taking only a few pages, while the real story, the tragedy of Jews in Europe ravaged by Hitler, emerges almost against the writer’s show more will.
Ultimately, The Postmistress is one of the best Holocaust novels I’ve ever read, all the more poignant because it is told from a non-Jewish point of view. And it is a tale of loneliness. Everyone is lonely there, in Franklin or in Europe, alone against the barbarity of war, just as the Jews of Europe stood alone against the killer Nazis. In few other books, the soul-devouring loneliness of the Jewish nation has been portrayed so well.
It’s also a tale of complicity, personified by the town of Franklin. The author paints Franklin’s population as petty people with trifling problems. Iris is getting a certificate of virginity to present to her sweetheart. Emma bemoans her orphan status despite her husband’s love. Their neighbors gossip and watch movies. The town, colorful and priggish, resembles a glossy postcard. Its only purpose is to serve as a backdrop for the action, a litmus paper to test humanity.
The action itself, in stark black and white, erupts across the Atlantic, where war rages and bombs devastate London. Frankie is trying to raise awareness of the war, but America doesn’t want to listen. “We don’t want to fight the foreign wars,” the good people of Franklin say. Occasionally, their chatting sounds like a macabre anecdote. “If those Jews are in camps in Europe, they must’ve done something wrong,” blurts one matron.
The juxtaposition between the complacent America and the wrecked Europe becomes almost unbearable, when Frankie grabs a chance to report from occupied France. For three weeks, she rides the French railways, witnessing as the Jews, singly and in groups, are herded towards the dead end, the gas chambers of Auschwitz.
There are few overt atrocities, only a couple of shots fired on the pages, but the underlying terror mounts despite the intervening placid scenes in Franklin. Before her assignment in France, Frankie thought that if she could just tell the truth, she might make a difference. But she can’t report this story: she doesn’t know the truth, and the dread in her heart can’t find its way to the radio waves. The “permanent pogrom” in Europe is too much for one lonely American reporter.
Blake’s literary prose creates an atmosphere of palpable tension. In places, the author even sacrifices her characters and plot to the beauty of her elaborate expressions and flowery metaphors. But the literary frills only highlight the brutality and hopelessness of the war.
Highly recommended to anyone interested in history of the WWII and the Holocaust.
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What happens when a message is not delivered – when a postmistress doesn’t deliver a letter or a reporter doesn’t tell a story? What if this letter or story contains the last words of the dead? Does it make it easier for loved ones to not read or hear these words? Or does the dead have a right to the last word?

Sarah Blake explores the spoken and written word in her compelling book, The Postmistress. The story focuses on the lives of three American women: Emma, the pregnant wife of a doctor tending to patients in London during the Blitz; Iris, the postmistress of a rural town where Emma lives; and Frankie, an American reporter broadcasting stories from London about the atrocities of the Blitz. While the United States had not show more entered World War II officially, the war’s effects had already befallen these women.

It’s Emma’s husband, Will, who brings these women together. Prior to his departure to London, he left a letter with Iris, asking her to deliver it to Emma should he die overseas. Then, while staying in a bomb shelter, Will meets Frankie and talks at length about his wife. After emerging from the bomb shelter, Will dies in the most ordinary of ways – a car accident – and Frankie is with him as he dies. In his pocket, Frankie find his last letter to Emma . Frankie keeps the letter but couldn’t mail it before embarking on her next assignment – to record the stories of Jewish refugees on trains en route to the Portuguese coast. As Frankie travels from train to train, Will’s letter stays in her pocket, a burning reminder of message she has not delivered.

The train stories were heart-breaking: Families trying to stay together; people avoiding slaughter; men and woman trying to remain hopeful despite the reality of their situation. This is where Blake shines, bringing every character to life, from Emma, Iris and Frankie, to the Jewish refugee who only occupies a page or two. Blake slights no one in her story. Though their time on the page might be short, these characters’ impact stays with you well beyond the last chapter.

The Postmistress is a bloodless war story that conjures powerful reactions to the characters who grace the book’s pages. Ultimately, it’s the story about hope, the effects of the war on civilians and the power of the written and spoken word. True to its theme, The Postmistress is as powerful as the messages entrusted to Iris and Frankie – a novel this reader won’t soon forget. show less

Let me start by saying that I have never read a book quite like this one before. This book was difficult to read and yet I had trouble putting it down. I know that doesn't make any sense. The difficulty I found in reading it was not due to the language used. Nor was it due to lack of interest. The difficulty stemmed from the subject matter.

This book is one of the most thought provoking books I have ever read. Though this book is a work of fiction and should not be used as a reference to the events of World War II, I still found myself transported to Europe as the Germans took rise. Fiction or not, reading about the chaotic destruction was hard to swallow. If you pick up this book, you will read amount thousands of fleeing people. Their show more fear and anguish is all-consuming and heartbreaking.

All of that being said, I loved this book. Every single character is intriguing in their own right - their stories beautifully written. These characters draw you in, and they won't let you go until their stories are finished. I strongly recommend this book to everyone.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into when I picked up this book. Reading this, I have experienced every emotion imaginable. I was left with a simple phrase that will probably stick with me for a very long time. And that is: "the story knew."

There is a story in everything. Everyone you know - every event has a story. Every decision we make impacts our story. We may not have known at the time what effects the decision would make. But I can guarantee you that "the story knew." show less

Sat down with this book and looked up 105 pages later. It was well-written and moved right along even though I didn't expect to be taken with another WWII novel. The references to Edward R. Murrow's London broadcast were interesting and the female journalist/broadcaster made me think of Martha Gellhorn. Multiple threads make up the story and the characters are moderately well flushed out.

I probably should have abandoned this book, but at some point I had invested enough time in listening to it that I decided to stick it out to the bitter end. It didn't help that my listening stretched over a month as first my iPod quit working (thankfully under warranty) and I had to send it in for a replacement, then I had surgery and mostly watched TV during my recovery. For a while I thought these interruptions might have had something to do with the trouble I had with becoming engaged in the story, but I've concluded that the problem was the story itself. The one bright spot was that I got to listen to the narration of the very talented Orlagh Cassidy, a reader I first encountered in the audio version of the Maisie Dobbs novels.

The show more story follows the lives of three women, only one of whom was the postmistress of the title, during the early months of World War II, before the U.S. entrance into the war. Iris (the postmistress) and Emma live in a small Cape Cod town, and both are newcomers. Emma is the doctor's bride. Frankie is an American journalist covering the Blitz in London, where she works with the legendary Edward R. Murrow. The three women are brought together by a tragedy.

The women allow their emotions to form their beliefs rather than the other way around. They came across to me as selfish and somewhat shallow. Iris and Frankie both keep news of a tragedy from Emma by rationalizing that they're protecting Emma, but they're really protecting themselves from what they know will be an unpleasant experience. Their incessant brooding over what they knew that Emma didn't know tried my patience almost beyond endurance.

I also disliked Frankie's attitude of moral superiority regarding the plight of the Jews in Europe. Frankie was first outraged and then depressed because of the perceived apathy of average Americans about the situation. I couldn't forget that the people Frankie was condemning were just coming out of a decade of economic depression, with widespread unemployment, hunger, and suffering. Knowing what I know on this side of history, I wish that more people had been aware of the extent of the suffering of the European Jews and had done more to prevent the terrible things that happened to them. However, Frankie seemed to forget that it might be difficult for people to focus on the suffering of unseen people an ocean away when there are many people suffering in their own communities. show less

For me, this book was less about Iris James, the small town postmistress in Cape Cod from whom the book gets its title, and more about Frankie Bard, an American, and pioneering female radio journalist based in London and Europe during the early years of World War II. Frankie tries to bring the stories of World War II, the Blitz, and the plight of Europe’s Jewish refugees into American homes before Americans are involved in the war.

While I loved The Night Circus and The Book of Lost Things for the questions they raised about the nature, purpose and power of fictional stories, I loved The Postmistress because of the questions it raised about 'real life' stories. What can one person do in the face of suffering they are powerless to show more change? How many times can you tell the same stories, hoping to influence people that sometimes seem determined to shut out anything that they don’t want to hear? How important is it nevertheless to witness and to tell stories about this suffering? How do you retain a journalists sense of ‘neutrality’ and ‘objectivity’, when you witness such horrors, and confront first-hand the world’s apathy to what you've seen? And what sort of a toll does it take, knowing that all you can do is to tell these stories, and that you may never know the end of the stories that you tell?

I found this book very thought-provoking. It reminded me of States of Denial, a non fiction exploration of the reasons why people sometimes can't or don't see - or choose not to see - what's happening right in front of them.

I wasn't entirely happy with the liberties Blake reports taking with history in her note at the end of the novel, but I'm very glad that she does report this, and I appreciate the way in which it helps her flesh out some of these very interesting themes. show less