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A Love Letter to Letters
I often listen to audiobooks while taking care of household tasks like folding laundry, doing dishes, and cleaning out closets. When recently engaged in the latter task, I listened to The Correspondent by Virginia Evans. While I loved hearing the stellar, full-cast recording featuring different readers for each character who writes a letter in this epistolary novel, I quickly realized that this was a book I would buy in print to savor again and add to my shelf.
I was particularly enchanted by this book because a special kind of pleasure can arise when life mirrors one’s reading, and that’s exactly what I experienced with Evans’ novel. The Correspondent is a love letter to writing letters, and as I listened to it, I came across boxes of old correspondence in the back of one of my closets. Several times I had to pause the audiobook in order to pore over cards and letters I’d received over the years from family and friends. I got rid of some pieces. It felt downright therapeutic to shred those that rehashed experiences I no longer wish to carry with me on paper, and it was freeing to recycle Christmas cards with only a signature, or perfunctory thank-you notes. But I kept most pieces and loosely organized them for safekeeping.
One box is filled with letters from a dear friend, dating back over a decade. After our first meeting (which felt less like meeting someone than recognizing her), our friendship began in those letters. As I reread words she wrote to me in her familiar penmanship, I fondly remembered the thrill of getting a fat envelope in the mail with her initials in the return address—TMS—and then the bittersweet feeling of regret mixed with gratitude when waiting for mail to arrive became an encumbrance to our close bond, and we switched to texts and phone calls in between visits.
In one of her protagonist’s letters, Evans writes:
“Imagine, the letters one has sent out into the world, the letters received back in turn, are like the pieces of a magnificent puzzle, or, a better metaphor, if dated, the links of a long chain, and even if those links are never put back together, which they will certainly never be, even if they remain for the rest of time dispersed across the earth like the fragile blown seeds of a dying dandelion, 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?”
My friend’s letters do mean a great deal to me. They represent her faith that I would meet her openness with my own. And when I wrote back, I reciprocated that faith. That’s not “a very small thing,” but everything when it comes to friendship. And who knows? Maybe someday one of our descendants will come across a letter one of us wrote to the other, tucked away in a box, or folded into the pages of an old book. And when they read that letter, they just might be inspired to write to one of their friends, linking the chain in a new direction.
And while it may well seem an impossibility to ever reassemble all of the links in a chain of correspondence, Modern Memoirs clients’ books often include letters, and we’ve even published books entirely comprised of correspondence. Does this missive inspire you to riffle through an old box of letters? Or to write a note to a friend today? I hope so. And if you’re feeling really inspired, write to us at Modern Memoirs about that book you’ve been dreaming of. We’d love to hear from you.
Yours truly,
Megan St. Marie
President
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Order your copy of Virginia Evans’ novel The Correspondent at our Bookshop.org affiliate link below. (And while you’re at it, you might want to pick up some stationery, too.) | | |
White Poppy Press:
Our Imprint for Artists, Historians, Novelists, Poets, and Other Writers
by Megan St. Marie
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If you or someone you know has a publishing project in mind, remember that with our imprint, White Poppy Press (WPP), Modern Memoirs, Inc. has decades of experience publishing memoirs—and more.
For while it’s true that most of our clients write memoirs and related texts such as books of letters and genealogies, we also regularly field inquiries from poets, novelists, historians, and artists. Our WPP imprint extends our expertise beyond the memoirs heralded by our company’s name, with the White Poppy Press logo and name often better suited for books that fall outside personal and family histories.
Under WPP, we provide the same level of professional service and high-quality materials for a diverse range of projects, including:
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Coffee Table Art Books: Showcasing your art or photography in stunning, high-quality coffee table books
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Essays & Anthologies: Compiling your essays or creating anthologies with our expert publishing services
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Fiction & Poetry Books: Bringing your creative writing to life with professionally designed and printed books
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Historical & Journal Publishing: Preserving historical documents and personal journals in beautifully bound volumes
To learn about authors’ experiences publishing various genres of books with our company, you may read interviews compiled in two Digital Books we’ve created, aptly entitled Five Questions: Reflections from Modern Memoirs Authors. We prompted our authors to reflect on their experience and to elucidate the process, its challenges and its rewards.
Links to both editions are on the cover images below, each with a table of contents helpfully organized by genre.
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A Call to Loved Ones
by Director of Publishing Ali de Groot
The phone rings at the office. A familiar voice at the other end proceeds to gush about how exciting it was first to receive his books and then to hand them out to his family members. “This is beyond my wildest expectations!”
Or an email comes in from a former client’s son saying, “We’re so pleased Mom published her book during her lifetime… thank you!”
It happens time and time again at Modern Memoirs that we hear from people about how important their books are and how impressed, blissful, enthralled, and enlightened their family members were to receive them.
One woman, whose husband wrote a memoir 10 years ago, wrote us to say that he’s now in memory care, but the book sits by his bed and she often reads aloud from it. “We just celebrated our 57th wedding anniversary, and I read to him for hours about our first meeting and our first year of marriage. He loves it. He keeps looking at me as if to say, ‘I can’t believe we actually wrote a book!’”
On that note, it only now occurs to me that I myself have at least three family members whom I could ask to give their thoughts on what it means to have a copy of my mother’s tribute book, which I wrote back in 1999. I’ll follow up on that! Meanwhile…
If you are a Modern Memoirs client and have any family members or loved ones who would be open to discussing what your book means to them, please CONTACT ME HERE with their contact info and I’ll email them. It would mean the world to us, and you might learn a thing or two, as well.
| | | Featured Blog Posts by Our Staff | | |
Generations of a Name, Part II:
Or, Why Genealogy Is Helpful
by Director of Publishing Ali de Groot
How valuable it is to write things down, not on a computer file that could be obsolete after some years or decades, but on paper, which can last centuries.
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Reflections from Anna Strobel and Her Brother, Bill Kingston
by Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg
I have received very positive responses from both family and friends. The times I have heard “I never knew that!” are too numerous to count. I hope that those who have seen this book will be inspired to do the same for their families, as it provides a background that enriches relationships.
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Frederick Morrison Campbell and Agnes Pearson Cancelliere: A Genealogy
by Douglas A. Campbell, Modern Memoirs (2024)
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In Honor of the Country’s 250th Birthday
by Genealogist Liz Sonnenberg
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In this genealogy, the author recounts the lives of more than 30 ancestors, including two Patriots of the American Revolution and their descendants (several of whom became members of the Sons and Daughters of the American Revolution). Notable is the fact that the author gleaned much of the information for the book from a shoebox full of family records that he received when his parents died. Have you got a similar treasure trove of papers and photos in your attic or closet, just waiting to be discovered?
Read the author’s intriguing reflections about his project in the November 2024 Modern Memoirs 5Q blog. “I wrote the book so that my parents will not soon be forgotten by their descendants, and so that my children, nieces and nephews, and their children, could see their lives in a larger context. I’m gratified that they not only appreciated it, but they enjoyed it, too.”
| Irwin K. Campbell, Sons of the American Revolution card, 1927 | | | |
Memory Lane Stroll
We’d love to hear your brief personal reflections on the question of the month. Write your response for a chance to be featured in the next edition of our e-newsletter!
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We received the following response to our JUNE question: What is a favorite summertime tradition of yours?
“Weekends at our summer lake house on Long Pond in Lakeville, Massachusetts with our children and grandchildren. Boating, swimming, fishing, jet skiing, tubing, and grilling. Love this time with my family!”
—David Alan Rose
| | July Question: How did you mark the United States’ 250th birthday? | |
Staff responses:
Megan & Sean St. Marie: We went to Megan’s dad’s family reunion on the 4th, with fireworks the night before, surrounded by cousins.
Ali de Groot: Camping under the stars and the fireworks.
Liz Sonnenberg: Continued following in the footsteps of my ancestor who was a Patriot in the American Revolution, this time visiting his hometown of Sturbridge, Massachusetts. After seeing the fireworks in Webster, we thought the highlight of the weekend would be a public reading of the Declaration of Independence at Old Sturbridge Village. While the reading was momentous, we were even more blown away by the opportunity to witness the naturalization ceremony of 154 new U.S. citizens that preceded it.
Nicole Miller: Family and fireworks.
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Stop by to see us in person or online:
417 West Street, Suite 104
Amherst, MA 01002
www.modernmemoirs.com
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