Byron Hoot reviews author Jess Weible‘s new publication, Dead Letters: Delivering Unopened Mail from a Pennsylvania Ghost Town

What Fragile Hope Dies … ?           

Imagine being given a letter written at the turn of the 20th century. You have no relationship to the writer of the letter or the addressee. Imagine someone speaking to you to go on a quest to find – possibly– a descendent of the intended recipient of that letter. And imagine doing so.

 That’s exactly what Jessica Weible does in Dead Letters: Delivering Unopened Mail from a Pennsylvania Ghost Town.  Not for one but eleven letters – written in English, Italian, Hungarian, and Yiddish.

And bracketing those stories is the story of how Weible became involved, what she went through to uncover and then find living decedents. Then finishing her project, presenting it to the woman who had given her the letters and became a mentor.

Add to that the simple, down to earth moments in the lives of perfect strangers. And the resonance of some of those moments in your own life from letters written in or around 1909.

I have not yet mentioned these were letters found in the once upon a time general store and post office of Howe, PA. A place on Route 36 now defined by a sign going north reading HOWE and a sign going south about a mile apart reading HOWE. What is there is not what was there.

It’s an unusual read because there is no beginning, middle, or end to the stories of the letters. It’s as if twelve letters in a bottle had been washed ashore. And Weible let us read them.

Not to be forgotten — because they are a vital part of these letters — is the context, the historical facts, the struggle of immigrants, the success and failures that the hard sleuthing of this story reveals.

Finally, it is an easy read: well-written in a conversational tone that encourages the reader to turn the page. “What fragile hope dies within each unread letter?”

Buy the book and find out.