The Goodwill Series: The Postmistress

By Kristin Bivens

I, once again, found myself at Goodwill a month or so ago for a half off sale and picked up a book called, The Postmistress, by Sarah Blake.

Though the book's cover does it little justice and appears more to me to be a romance novel, it was not. And it was better than I had expected it to be.

I'm extremely interested in the era of World War II and all that it implies. I'm especially interested in women and their role in the war. The Postmistress focuses on three women, all touched by the war, two that live in Franklin, Massachusetts and one that is covering the war in Europe. The books cover the time before the United States joined the war efforts. But, everyone can feel the inevitability of the U.S. joining. 

Iris James is the Postmistress of the Franklin Post Office. She knows Emma Finch, who is married to the town doctor, though to begin with they are not friends. Emma begins simply as a patron of the post office, receiving letters from her husband who after a tragic patient death, leaves to help those in Europe. He meets our third character, Frankie Bard, while there. She's a reporter who has joined Edward Murrow in the difficult job of reporting from the front.

There is a nice mix of personalities between the three women, which I really appreciate. My previous Goodwill book, One Fifth Avenue, had a bit of an issue with that. 

Iris is older, single and courting a man in the village. She is shy and not overtly sexual. Emma is married and pregnant, with her husband away. Frankie is the tough journalist, out to seek the next big story, taking it as far as hopping a train through Europe, looking for the story on the Jews. But she doesn't remain unemotional, like so many tough women do. She cries, she weeps and she struggles to understand the cruelty of the Nazis. She also is un-attached, and none of her focus in the book is on finding a man. 

When I first started reading the book, it took me a few chapters to get into it and know where I was in each chapter, as they switch between characters. But once the stories got going, and I started to get to know each woman separately, I became attached to them, wanting to know what happens next.

Frankie Bard is definitely the woman I was most interested in, as she has the most exciting and interesting story line. She's overseas; people are being bombed, killed. She's hiding out in bunkers and taking trains across countries. She's a very strong woman, but she also is shocked by the man that is short in front of her, and cries when a small child is taken away from his mother at the train station. I also like the way it brings a civilian living in a war zone to your attention.

The book really comes together in the end, which is my favorite part. Throughout the story, we see as all the women become connected in various ways that they aren't even aware of. They are all connected by the war, even though the country they live in isn't even "involved" yet. And when they all finally come together, it makes you realize just how close we are when at one time, we may have been far apart.