KATE & FRIDA

A book order sent by letter from Paris to Seattle turns into a flourishing friendship.

It’s charming to encounter an epistolary novel these days. The once-popular form has fallen out of fashion in the age of digital communication, but Fay resuscitates it, setting her story in the early 1990s, the last possible time when it could be convincing. The letter writers are two young women, Kate Fair and Frida Rodriguez, who even meet through the mail. Kate works at Seattle’s Puget Sound Book Company and is given the task of answering a chatty letter Frida sends to the store ordering a copy of The Face of War, published in 1959 by journalist Martha Gellhorn. "I was told I’m the only person here who’s perky enough to respond to you," she writes. Frida wants the book because, although she was raised in Los Angeles, she’s living in Paris with big dreams of becoming what she calls a War Journo Dame. Kate, too, wants to be a writer and has finished several novels without publishing any. Their correspondence quickly becomes a friendship, their letters full of their personal histories, current dreams, and romantic relationships. Kate falls for a depressive young novelist, while Frida follows a dashing war correspondent to Sarajevo under siege—and suddenly her letters become heartbreakingly serious, no longer lively reports on Paris cafes but stark descriptions of the horror of war. She returns to Paris, unsure whether she has the courage to be a War Journo Dame, but finds a new passion working with refugees. Back in Seattle, Kate deals with her own losses and discoveries. Their voices remain distinct in the letters, often naïve, self-doubting, or overconfident, but authentically the voices of young women finding themselves. The book spans several years with lots of fun ’90s pop-culture details, and it often focuses on food, from peanut butter cookies to chiles rellenos, with several recipes included at the end.

An old-fashioned form and two lively modern women make for an enjoyable novel.