Letters From Skye

Elle Newlands, Katy Townsend, and Lincoln Hoppe lead an ensemble that delivers a poignant and irresistible epistolary romance. In 1912, at the outset of WWI, Scots poet Elspeth Dunn receives a fan letter from a college student in America, so beginning a correspondence that culminates in an affair. When a bomb hits Elspeth's home in 1940, a trove of letters is unearthed. Elspeth disappears the following day, leaving behind her daughter, Margaret, and one mysterious letter. As Elspeth and Margaret, Newlands and Townsend stand out with their warm Scots accents and ease with Gaelic, while Hoppe's earnest soft voice often betrays a mischievous smile. Listeners will revel in the intimacy of the performances. A perfect fit for audio. A.S. Winner of AudioFile Earphones Award (c) AudioFile 2013, Portland, Maine

Starred review from April 22, 2013
Brockmole uses letters to tell a remarkable story of two women, their loves, their secrets, and two world wars, cutting to the important matters that letter writers struggle to put into just the right words. In 1912, young poet Mrs. Elspeth Dunn, who has never left Scotland’s Isle of Skye because of her fear of boats, receives her first fan letter from David Graham, a college student in Urbana, Ill. They begin a long correspondence. After Elspeth’s husband goes off to war, she overcomes her fear and crosses to London to meet briefly with David, who is on his way to France to serve in the American Ambulance Field Service. Interspersed with Elspeth and David’s letters are 1940 missives from Margaret, Elspeth’s daughter, to her uncle and her fiancé as she tries to find out about her father, since Elspeth will not talk about her past. The beauty of Scotland, the tragedy of war, the longings of the heart, and the struggles of a family torn apart by disloyalty are brilliantly drawn, leaving just enough blanks to be filled by the reader’s imagination. Agent: Courtney Miller-Callihan, Sanford J. Greenburger Associates.