Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase

Starred review from May 15, 2015
Letters and postcards once used as bookmarks flutter out of used books, forgotten signs of liaisons. Roberta treasures books so much that she pines away in her beloved job at Old and New Bookshop, watching Philip, her boss and the man she can't yet admit to herself that she loves, take the beautiful Jenna as his lover. But secrets begin to spill out of the books-secrets that will change her understanding of the past and hopes for the future. One fateful day, Roberta's father, John, brings in an old suitcase labeled "Mrs. D. Sinclair," filled with her grandmother Dorothea Pietrykowski's old books. Between the pages, Roberta discovers a letter dated Feb. 8, 1941, signed by her grandfather Jan Pietrykowski, warning Dorothea that what she is about to do will dishonor her, imperil her very soul, and wrong some unnamed mother and child. If only Roberta could ask her grandmother or her father about the letter, but at 109, Dorothea has entered hospice care, and John's health is failing, as well. Meanwhile, Jenna confesses to a bewildered Roberta that she's pregnant with a child fathered by her ex-boyfriend. Walters' debut novel nimbly weaves together Roberta's and Dorothea's stories-the reader almost expects to pull a shadowy missive from its spine. Roberta's life is a mess; she stifles her feelings for Philip, twisting her desires into a sad affair with a married man. But Dorothea's story is the stuff of films: disowned, disappointed in marriage, crushed by multiple miscarriages-Dorothea rises above it all to manage her own farmhouse, to take into her home two young women, part of the Women's Land Army, and to find new love with Jan, the dashing Polish Squadron Leader. A breathtaking, beautifully crafted tale of loves that survive secrets.

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July 1, 2015
Musty books, unrequited love, and old family secrets combine to create a crackling multigenerational saga infused with passion, pathos, and evocative WWII-era historical detail. When Roberta, a lonely bookstore clerk painfully and silently in love with her boss, comes into possession of an old suitcase filled with her centenarian grandmother's old books, a host of family secrets that will forever change the course of her own life come tumbling out from between the pages. Why is the suitcase labeled Mrs. D. Sinclair when her grandmother's name is Dorothea Pietrykowski? How is it possible that her grandfather, Polish fighter pilot Jan Pietrykowski, wrote her grandmother a letter dated a year after his supposed death? With her own life increasingly in disarray, Roberta delves into the past to uncover the stunning twists and turns of her own family's history. Plenty of book-club and cinematic potential in this irresistible page-turner.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

June 15, 2015

Roberta works at the Old and New Bookshop, carefully saving the ephemera she discovers among the pages of the books she shelves. But nothing prepares her for what she finds in one of her grandmother's books: a letter from her grandfather, written a year after he was supposedly killed in World War II. Set in England, the story alternates chapters between Roberta's present-day problems and her grandmother Dorothea's more difficult wartime life. There are plenty of family secrets to uncover, with the reader given enough information to guess at the answers before Roberta figures them out. The historical details and characters are strong, but Roberta's story is less engaging. At times it's difficult to differentiate between characters; the wartime story and Roberta's quiet, genteel existence feel as though they belong to the past. VERDICT Touching on popular themes, both bookish and war related, this novel aims high but falls just short of the target. It's a solid debut, however, and may appeal to those who have also liked bookishly romantic stories such as Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows's The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society or Gabrielle Zevin's The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry. [See Prepub Alert, 2/9/15.]--Melanie Kindrachuk, Stratford P.L., Ont.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

March 1, 2015

At 34, Roberta is barely ambling through life when she finds a letter inside her grandmother Dorothy's old suitcase that changes her understanding of her family history. During World War II, 40-year-old Dorothy longed for love and children, and an encounter with a Polish pilot seemed full of promise. Then something earthshaking happened, with consequences reaching all the way down to Roberta. With a 30,000-copy first printing and lots of book club promotion.

Copyright 2015 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.