The Hatbox Letters - Softcover

Powning, Beth

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0676976409 ISBN 13: 9780676976403

Publisher: Vintage Canada, 2005

Synopsis

Beth Powning offers readers an unforgettable story of love, grief and renewal — both past and present — as well as her extraordinary perceptions of the natural world.

At the age of fifty-two, Kate Harding has hit a crossroads: the pain that overwhelmed her when her husband died suddenly from a heart attack the previous year hasn’t diminished, and she is at a loss as to how to go on with her life. Living alone in her large Victorian house, its emptiness magnified by memories of better days, Kate can only dream of a time when her grief will abate, at least enough to allow her to hope for change.

When Kate’s sister drops off nine antique hatboxes of papers recovered from Shepton, their grandparents’ eighteenth-century home in Connecticut, Kate isn’t sure she is ready to face the remnants of her family’s past. She’s having enough trouble going through Tom’s things. Soon, though, the smell of the hatboxes — of her grandparents’ musty attic, of old quilts and satin ribbons — begins to permeate the air in her home and “awakens a feeling in Kate that she remembers from childhood, composed of odd emotional strands: love, sorrow, pain, contentment.” As she slowly sorts through the letters, diaries and photographs, Kate begins to find some solace in the past, in her childhood memories of Shepton when every home was a comfort, every relationship untinged by pain. But the further she delves into her grandparents’ history, the more Kate realizes that her perfect world had its own dark side — an undercurrent of tragedy, personal loss and eternal grief.

Then an old acquaintance moves back to New Brunswick, and Kate begins to edge out of her solitude, surprising herself by accepting his invitation to dinner. Gregory and his wife were friends with Tom and Kate when the kids were young, a time of camping trips and days at the beach. But Gregory, now divorced, is also carrying the weight of grief, from the suicide of his son many years earlier. At first, Gregory represents a chance for Kate to capture some of the simple joy of her past, but when she realizes that Gregory is still living in it, his memories and pain warped into self-destructive anger, she knows she has to back away. And when Gregory’s determination to return to the way things were proves unshakeable, a new tragedy forces Kate to begin picking up the pieces of her shattered life.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

In this beautiful and deeply moving novel, a young widow struggles to come to terms with her solitary life in the rambling Victorian house she shared until recently with her husband and children in semi-rural New Brunswick.
It is in this house, surrounded by heirloom gardens and the gentle sounds of a river, that Kate Harding, 52, faces her second winter since the untimely death of her husband. Her children, now grown, are living away, and Kate is truly on her own. In her living room are several hatboxes filled with letters and other ghostly ephemera, recently brought by her sister from the attic of their grandparents' 18th-century Connecticut house. Their sweet mustiness tinges the air and makes Kate dream of her childhood and of her beloved grandparents. She remembers the sense of permanence and refuge that she felt in their apple-scented world, as well as, more recently, with her husband. As she begins to read the hatbox letters, she discovers that what to a child seemed a serene and blissful marriage was in fact founded on a tragic event. As Kate's eyes clear to the truth of the past, a new tragedy unfolds, and her own house, filled with the shared detritus of marriage and motherhood, becomes the refuge where Kate can connect the strands of her unravelled life.
In The Hatbox Letters -- which is both sad and exhilarating, touching and illuminating -- Beth Powning offers readers an unforgettable story of love, grief and renewal, both past and present, as well as her extraordinary perceptions of the natural world.
Excerpt from "The Hatbox Letters
"The birds rise with a muted thunder, their wings serrate the light. For an instant, a peregrine falcon zigzags through theflock. Then it drops from the belly of the rising bird-cloud. In its talons is a sandpiper, crumpled like a ball of paper. It is hard to decide which drama to observe, the escape of the falcon with its prey or the flock's display as the birds rush seaward like a single entity, a ballooning flame that rises and falls, expands and implodes, one instant silver and the next black. The flock speeds back towards the beach, passes close to the watchers, makes a dazzling turn, fast as thought. Then, with a diminishing roar, the birds waver, their legs drop, stretch. They touch down. They fluff their feathers, Kate observes, the way humans pull coats up around necks after a shock. Trying to put ourselves back as we were.

"From the Hardcover edition.

From the Back Cover

Praise for The Hatbox Letters

"Powning brilliantly illuminates grief in all its shape-shifting pain, and in so doing, expands her characters' lives, and ours...a deeply beautiful book...an extraordinary achievement."
- The Globe and Mail

"Tender and lush. . . . Powning writes about grief with uncanny precision; she gets all its ambushes and piercing aches exactly right."
- National Post

"Powning's subject here is no less than the relationship of life and death, and she engages it with rigor and grace."
- Quill & Quire

Praise for Home: Chronicle of a North Country Life

"A beautiful celebration of natural life. . . . "
- E. L. Doctorow

"In a world increasingly cynical and numb, Powning puts a light in the window for us all. . . . " - Chicago Tribune

"Powning combines an extraordinary understanding and sense of place with an affinity for the world of nature...this book imparts a feeling of serenity; Annie Dillard fans will enjoy it."
- Publishers Weekly

"An eloquent celebration of the rural lifestyle and a joy to experience."
- The Bloomsbury Review

"Powning's choice of language and the rhythm of her prose wondrously evoke the idea of living within a natural setting. . . ."
- San Francisco Book Review

About this edition

• Publisher: Vintage Canada
• Publication date: 2005
• ISBN 10: 0676976409
• ISBN 13: 9780676976403
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 368