The Upstate Dispatch: A Novel - A Sapphic Love Story of Grief, Healing, and Hidden Letters in Upstate New York

From New York Times bestselling author Kim van Alkemade comes a story of love, loss, and healing that speaks to our present moment while richly evoking the past.A grieving writer who sets out to revive an abandoned bookshop in upstate New York discovers forgotten letters that reveal the shop’s secret sapphic history. Thirty-four-year-old writer Audrey Beacon is grieving alone during lockdown when a post about a bookshop for sale in upstate New York pops into her social media feed like a lifeline.Enthralled by the historic house and the massive barn bursting with books, Audrey impulsively makes an offer.Soon, she’s cashing out her savings, loading her possessions into her dead husband’s van, and fleeing Manhattan for the village of Schuywich, determined to outrun the ghosts of her past. In 1956, it’s love at first sight when Schuywich librarian Hazel McIntyre meets dashing magazine writer Evelyn Cabot at a summer camp in Maine that discreetly promises a “different vacation for professio