Is there any mystery greater than those we love the most?

In this remarkable collaboration, New York Times bestselling author Luanne Rice and Joseph Monninger combine their unique talents to create a powerfully moving novel of an estranged husband and wife through a series of searching, intimate letters. By way of a correspondence so achingly real you’ll forget it’s fiction, they trace the history of a love affair and of a family before, and after, the moment that changed the course of two people’s journey forever.

Sam and Hadley West are both trying in their own ways to survive after the unthinkable loss of their only son in Alaska. For Sam, a sports journalist, acceptance means an arduous trek by dogsled across the bleak and beautiful arctic wilderness to find the place where Paul died. For Hadley, it means renting a benignly haunted, salt-soaked cottage off the Maine coast where she begins to paint again.

Now, at opposite ends of the country, waiting for their divorce to be finalized, they begin to exchange letters by post, missives filled with longing and truths they’ve never before voiced, as they recall their marriage—its magic moments and its challenges—and begin to rediscover the reasons they fell in love in the first place.

As Sam risks his life to reach the remote crash site, Hadley begins an equally hazardous inner journey to a rendezvous with the mad grief of a mother’s heart. At the place where all else is lost, they will meet again….


From the Hardcover edition.

 

The Letters by Luanne Rice and Joseph Monninger
978-0-553-80741-7


November 6
Dear Hadley,
I made it. I suppose it would be more accurate to say I can see how I will make it in the next few days. I am at the last stage, as far as the planes can take me, at a fishing camp called Laika Star. From here I travel by dogsled, a prospect that both thrills me and fills me with no small amount of fear. You remember how I loved Jack London and read it to Paul when he was ten? Suddenly the prospect of a real mush stands before me, and I am not as intrepid as I believed myself to be. Strange when dreams come face to face with reality. I am to meet the dog driver tomorrow. She will go over my equipment and supply anything else that I need. It should take about ten days, which is a long time to be in the Alaskan bush in winter.

I think of you often here. I'm not sure you would like this country. Alaska is vast and lonely and haunting. It's one thing to hear about it, another to travel it. Most of the state's population lives near Anchorage or Fairbanks. Good roads connect those two cities, but the rest of the state relies on planes. You know all that, of course. I'm sorry if I'm telling you more or less than you need to know. It's been years--back to our courtship, really--since I wrote you a true letter. And I am beyond email, or any electronic communication. Even to call would take a satellite phone, and I suspect we should stand by our decision to take a break for a while to sort out what our marriage means or how it should end. Letters seem like a more reasoned way to communicate. I hope you understand and I hope you'll write back.

I also wanted to say I know you think this trip is a bad idea. I understand. I do. But I have to see where he died, honey. I just do. I don't know if it will change anything, or bring me any peace, but I feel I must do it. I can't go forward until I know more. I want to know how he spent his last days, and what he thought and felt, as least as far as such things are knowable. I'm sorry if my need to do this causes you pain.

On a lighter note, I should mention that you would like my cabin. It is a model of efficiency and low-tech elegance. Everything is fashioned out of logs, like a boy's dream of a Lincoln Log cabin. Martha Stewart meets Sergeant Preston of the Yukon! A Vermont Castings stove sits in one corner, and you can open the doors to the stove and it becomes a fireplace. Beautiful, really. I have it running now and the room smells of cedar and pine and oak. The beds are firm and the linens top quality. The trout and salmon fishing around here is world class, I gather, and they routinely fly in some big names. In the dining room I've seen pictures of Bobby Knight, the famous basketball coach, and George Bush Sr. The proprietor, a man named Gus--shouldn't all proprietors be named Gus?--pointed out a dozen more photographs, but I just nodded and did my best to appear impressed, because clearly I was supposed to know who they were. TV stars, I guess. I didn't recognize any of them, and that simply confirms that I am hopelessly out of date.

I am eager to hear your news, but I will understand if you decide not to write back. I am not trying to gloss over the troubles we've had in our marriage. I understand that we may not be capable of mending our life together. I want you to know that I am sorry for my part in our rifts, and that as hurtful as I have been at times, it was never my intention to do anything but love you. I failed, of course, but I did not mean to fail.

More tomorrow.
Sam


November 7
Hadley--
I have a way to get the mail quickly to you, as remarkable as that must...

 

"Rice and Monninger beautifully convey love and hope...taking the reader on a journey of discovery.... With each character--and each author--providing vivid descriptions of his and her surroundings and intense emotions, it's hard for the reader to remember that she is reading fiction and not eavesdropping on personal correspondence saturated with sadness and love."

 

"[Sam and Hadley] endear themselves to the reader.... [who] will be reaching for a Kleenex by the end."

 

The Letters by Luanne Rice
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