A Secret Gift

The author finds a huge box of letters to his father, all written in December 1933. The father had placed an anonymous ad in the Canton, Ohio, newspaper offering to send $10 to some worthy readers who applied. The heartfelt supplications for help became the focus of this audiobook, a collection of the requests felt to be the most demonstrative of the zeitgeist, the social mores, and the hardship at America's lowest ebb. Narrator Mark Deakins's lusterless and dispirited treatment adds to the Depression's depression. As he switches from the author's supporting information to quoting the revealing and sincere applications, one can sense that Deakins's interpretation capitalizes on the letters' sadness. The desperate pleas summarize the hopeless attitudes on that Christmas as no discourse could do. J.A.H. (c) AudioFile 2010, Portland, Maine