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- Legal name: Jack Woodville London
- Birthdate: July 16, 1947 (age 64)
- Birthplace: Groom, Texas, USA
- Nationality: American
- Gender: Male
- Official Website: http://www.virepress.com
- Genres: Historical Fiction, Romance
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French Letters: Virginia’s War, is ‘not too shabby’ according to Columnist Jon Mark Beilue, praising this first novel with the observation that if a boy grows up named John Elway or Troy Aikman, he better be able to throw a football, and if your parents name you ‘Jack London,’ you better learn to write.
‘Not too shabby’ indeed – this first novel by Austin author and lawyer Jack Woodville London, is honored for three distinctly different ‘best- finalists’ awards, the most recent being Novels with a Romantic Element by Uncommon Historical Fiction. London’s novel of the Texas home front during World War II was also finalist for Best Historical Novel of the Year by the MWSA. It was previously recognized as a finalist for the Williams Foundation Award as Best Novel of the South in honor of Willie Morris, former editor of the Daily Texan, the Texas Observer, and Harper’s.
Virginia’s War, the first novel in London’s French Letters trilogy, follows the life of Virginia Sullivan, a ration stamp clerk in the town of Tierra, Texas, who learns she is married by reading it on the town’s post office bulletin board. Poppy Sullivan has published her surpise wedding announcement, without her knowledge, to explain a soon-to-be-obvious surprise. Virginia is not the only one who did not know she was married – her long-term on-again / off-again boyfriend, Will Hastings, is a medical doctor in the Army in France and knows nothing about the nuptials. Tierra could have been any town in the United States, with its gossips, unquestioning patriots, black marketeers, draft dodgers, and parents who grieve when the telegram comes and the blue star in the window becomes a gold star.
The sequel, French Letters: Engaged in War, is in galley proofs for publication in June, 2010. It is the parallel story about that soldier in the war in Europe, told at the same time as the events in Virginia’s War, and revealing Will and Virginia’s relationship when war, distance, and the uncertainty of the future kept them more apart than they could have known.
Together with the planned third novel, the French Letters trilogy is a portrait of our parents and our grandparents before they were our parents and our grandparents, struggling each day in an America that disappeared during World War II, a country of people who wanted the war over so that they could return to their former lives without realizing that America had changed and there would be no going back. Virginia’s War has been on the bestseller lists in Austin and Texas and has been well received at signings at Barnes & Noble and Book People since its release in February 2009.
‘Not too shabby’ indeed – this first novel by Austin author and lawyer Jack Woodville London, is honored for three distinctly different ‘best- finalists’ awards, the most recent being Novels with a Romantic Element by Uncommon Historical Fiction. London’s novel of the Texas home front during World War II was also finalist for Best Historical Novel of the Year by the MWSA. It was previously recognized as a finalist for the Williams Foundation Award as Best Novel of the South in honor of Willie Morris, former editor of the Daily Texan, the Texas Observer, and Harper’s.
Virginia’s War, the first novel in London’s French Letters trilogy, follows the life of Virginia Sullivan, a ration stamp clerk in the town of Tierra, Texas, who learns she is married by reading it on the town’s post office bulletin board. Poppy Sullivan has published her surpise wedding announcement, without her knowledge, to explain a soon-to-be-obvious surprise. Virginia is not the only one who did not know she was married – her long-term on-again / off-again boyfriend, Will Hastings, is a medical doctor in the Army in France and knows nothing about the nuptials. Tierra could have been any town in the United States, with its gossips, unquestioning patriots, black marketeers, draft dodgers, and parents who grieve when the telegram comes and the blue star in the window becomes a gold star.
The sequel, French Letters: Engaged in War, is in galley proofs for publication in June, 2010. It is the parallel story about that soldier in the war in Europe, told at the same time as the events in Virginia’s War, and revealing Will and Virginia’s relationship when war, distance, and the uncertainty of the future kept them more apart than they could have known.
Together with the planned third novel, the French Letters trilogy is a portrait of our parents and our grandparents before they were our parents and our grandparents, struggling each day in an America that disappeared during World War II, a country of people who wanted the war over so that they could return to their former lives without realizing that America had changed and there would be no going back. Virginia’s War has been on the bestseller lists in Austin and Texas and has been well received at signings at Barnes & Noble and Book People since its release in February 2009.
