The Postmistress (2010) (edit title/settings)

Ridiculously Simplified Synopsis edit see section history

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Characters/People edit see section history

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• Iris James: The postmistress of Franklin, MA, the last town on Cape Cod.
• Emma Trask Fitch: Married to the local doctor who goes to London to help during the Blitz. Truly and innocently in love.
• Frankie Bard: Radio journalist broadcasting to America from London for CBS. First woman to report from the Blitz in London.
• Dr. Will Fitch: Young Harvard educated doctor working on the outer Cape in Franklin, MA.
• Harriet Mendelsohn: Frankie's London flatmate, an AP journalist in London, concerned with the persecution of the Jews that is being hidden in Europe early in the war.
• Edward R. Murrow: Radio broadcaster and Frankie's boss in London
• Harry Vale: Mechanic in Franklin, MA. Convinced that German U-Boats will surface on the outer Cape. Sweet on Iris James. Wants the Post Office flagpole shortened.
• Otto Schelling: A Jewish Austrian who ended up in Franklin
• Florence Cripps: Owner of the largest B&B in Franklin.
• Mr. Flores: Bus driver whose route includes Franklin, Mass.
• Max Prescott: Frankie's supervisor and employed by the NY Tribune
• Marnie Niles: Franklin citizen
• Jim Dowell: AP reporter recently returned from Paris stationed in London
• Dusty Pankhurst: One of Murrow's boys
• Maggie and Jim Tom: Franklin citizens who have renovated a fish house along the harbor as a home.

Quotes edit see section history

• “The story flew into the air, from lips to ear—like a secret finding its immediate spot in the dark lodges of the brain—the dome of the sky collapsing space, and the world become a great whispering gallery for us all.”

• “Death was the lightest kiss, the coolest touch a pinch on the thread and then you were gone.”

  Emma Fitch

• “Some stories don't get told. Some stories you hold on to. To stand and watch and hold it in your arms was not cowardice. To look straight at the beast and feel its breath on your flanks and not to turn ---- one could the worth that way”

• “Women really ought to marry and settle down and have babies. Women ought not to walk bareheaded under the German bombs looking for vivid word pictures to paint for the people back home.”

• “Fine for Mrs Dalloway, impossible for Mrs Woolf.”

• “Late May in London. Oh her bed under the eaves at school, these would have been the words that called to mind tea-parties and strawberries and Henry James, when all civilisation could be contained within the blue borders of an English sky. Except for the smoking buildings and the stink of burning rubber and metal, one might almost imagine Dorian Gray, flushed and gorgeous behind one of those windows, and Mrs Dalloway coming out onto the square. Almost, Frankie thought...”

• “He'd come to understand that each one of us was alive, intensely alive, right until the instant of death.”

  Will Fitch

• “She might as well have broadcast directly into the wind.”

  Frankie Bard

• “The town was not waiting to start up with her arrival. The town was clearly already itself without her.”

  Emma Fitch

• “He waited as the stern man jigs for cod, the thick line loose in his hands, eyes off to the side, relaxed--every muscle ready to strike.”

• Popular Highlights from Kindle Customers

• Every story—love or war—is a story about looking left when we should have been looking right.

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• Some stories don’t get told. Some stories you hold on to. To stand and watch and hold it in your arms was not cowardice. To look straight at the beast and feel its breath on your flanks and not to turn—one could carry the world that way.

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• It’s about the lies we tell others to protect them, and about the lies we tell ourselves in order not to acknowledge what we can’t bear: that we are alive, for instance, and eating lunch, while bombs are falling, and refugees are crammed into camps, and the news comes toward us every hour of the day. And what, in the end, do we do?

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• How Iris and Frankie come to betray everything they stand for—that mail must be delivered, that truth must be reported—is the war story I hoped to tell.

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• Long ago, I believed that, given a choice, people would turn to good as they would to the light. I believed that reporting—honest, unflinching pictures of the truth—could be a beacon to lead us to demand that wrongs be righted, injustices punished, and the weak and the innocent cared for. I must have believed, when I started out, that the shoulder of public opinion could be put up against the door of public indifference and would, when given the proper direction, shove it wide with the power of wanting to stand on the side of angels.

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• “And one day, I got it. I lifted my head from the child’s chest I was listening to and realized, with a shock of relief: whatever is coming, comes. That’s what holds it all together. We are all of us here in the mess. There’s no way around it. And all I am in the face of it is a single voice and a pair of hands. Not anyone’s son anymore. Not anyone’s husband. Anonymous but necessary. Vital. A Lucky Strike.”

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• We do not create mood, Murrow had lectured her when she’d first arrived, we tell what there is to tell. Our job is not to persuade. Just provide the honest news.

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• “It does. Things go wrong all the time, but I catch them. And when I do”—Iris leaned forward on the counter—“when I do, Miss Bard, I realize that I have been allowed to catch them. Every mistake, every accident, every bit of chance caught—is a look at God. It is God looking at us.”

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• Years after, she would remember the warmth of his hand on hers and the last of the sun on her cheeks, and she would remember that moment, in the silence before someone broke it, the single moment of highest summer, brimful, with no room for more, and not time yet for the tipping, the pouring out and away.

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• But it was nearly impossible now to look away from what was clearly happening in Europe. The Jews were in a permanent, ceaseless pogrom.

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Setting & Locations edit see section history

• Franklin, Massachusetts: Fictional town on Cape Cod. The real Franklin, Mass is not on the Cape.
• London
• Mulhouse
• Berlin

First Sentence edit see section history

Series & Lists edit see section history

Authors & Contributors edit see section history

1. Sarah Blake (Author)

First Edition edit see section history

Classification edit see section history

• Library of Congress: PS3552.L3493P67
• Dewey: 813.54

Notes for Parents edit see section history

Adult

Subjects edit see section history

• Books › Literature & Fiction › Genre Fiction › Historical
• Books › Literature & Fiction › Literary

Links to Supplemental Material edit see section history

• Author's Website

More Books Like This edit see section history