Our story begins in retrospect with an aging Gretchen receiving a letter from home from her childhood friend Barb. As Gretchen lets her mind wander back to that fateful and tragic summer, she tells the story of how she became set on the path of becoming a successful journalist. Her story takes us back to small town Oklahoma during the years of World War II. When 14-year-old Gretchen's high school English teacher helps her land a job reporting for her local newspaper, she is thrilled by the prospect of having her stories published for real. The talented young writer wastes no time in having her first story published under the byline G.G. Gilman. In between her work with the newspaper, Gretchen also lives with her aging grandmother and helps to keep the family business afloat. One night, Gretchen becomes embroiled in a murder mystery when her friend's mother is brutally murdered. Gretchen is assigned the task of reporting the events as they happen. Everyone in town immediately jumps to conclusions about how the woman met her death, and tongues start wagging as Barb's mother is condemned as a loose woman that deserved what she got. Interestingly enough, we also learn about Gretchen's own mother who has recently fallen in love with a soldier that she has known for a little more than a week. As we watch Gretchen struggle to prove that Barb's mother isn't what she seems, we also watch her deal with her feelings about her own mother's indiscretions. We don't learn the truth of what really happened until the end of the book when Gretchen is in her sixties. Letter from Home is worth reading just because of the author's descriptive writing style. It's one of those stories that reads like a poem, and the surprise ending only adds more pleasure to its reading. All in all, Hart is an author that I will definitely be keeping an eye on.
I liked this book from the moment I saw the cover. It had the hint of a historical book and a little mystery to go with it. I was never more pleased. This book is told in parts in each chapter. You receive a bit of the letter at the beginning of each chapter and you then hear how G G writes the story for the Gazette. I really did enjoy this as I felt like I was reading a letter with the particulars all spelled out for me about the crime that was committed years ago in a small Oklahoma town. I felt like I was G G's best friend and she was telling me a story. Even though I figured out who the killer was very early in the story, that didn't bother me because the story was more about two young girls and when one girl's mother was murdered how it affected this small town during the war years. I loved every bit of this book and I look forward to reading more books by Carolyn Hart as she writes with such attention to the human spirit. It touched me the minute I started reading.Five out of five stars on this one.
I wanted something light to read after being immersed in Natural Flights of the Human Mind. I should have just grabbed a Nancy Drew from my cupboard. A teen reporter relives the night she and her friend found her friend's mother murdered. Sounds like a good Nancy Drew Plot. Unfortunately, this is probably twice as long as a ND book, and I figured out the murderer and why long before the jaw dropping end. The only thing it had going for it (as a Carolyn Hart book) is that it took place in OK, not in the usual locale of Ms. Hart's books, where they seem to have interminable (by which I mean over and over and over we get treated to the description of) oyster-shell drives and walkways.
—Marilyn Saul
This book is a complete departure from the usual "cozy" mysteries written by Hart. Mystery it is, but this one is serious. It was nominated for a Pulitzer Price, and would have deserved to win. Set in World War II small-town Oklahoma, it faithfully reproduces the conditions faced on the home front in 1944 as it follows one eventful week in the life of 14-year-old Gretchen Gilman. It's written as a memory, called up by that letter that gives the book its title. I won't divulge any further details, because the climax of the story comes as a total surprise. I'll just say that it is exquisitely written. Highly recommended.
—Ken Bickley
This was flat out awful. I just can’t believe someone actually liked this enough to recommend it to me! Two of its worst crimes are a completely unbelievable 13 year old protagonist and a shifting POV that keeps ending mid-sentence, forcing one to constantly go back to the previous chapter to figure out the sense of things. Then there's the dreary and thoroughly predictable mystery. I feel the tiniest urge to give it an honorable mention for its evocation of small-town life in the war years, but it is simply unbelievable that a 13-year-old would be making those observations. It does have a hint of interest in the way one sees the child realize her calling to be a news reporter, and perhaps if the author had aged her protagonist by just a few more years it might have made sense.
—Alexa
