Booking Through Thursday: Letters!

Have you ever written an author a fan letter?

Did you get an answer?

Did it spark a conversation? A meeting?

Yes, I have written a letter to an author.

I've always liked the stories of the pioneers who headed west along the Oregon Trail. (This may have something to do with the computer game; I don't know). A trilogy of books--All Together in One Place, No Eye Can See, and What Once We Loved, by Jane Kirkpatrick, deals with a group of women who made this journey. The books are based on the historic account of a a disastrous trip across the continent, in which most of the men died and the women had to keep the train going.

I really liked the characterizations of the women in these novels, so I wrote to Jane Kirkpatrick and told her so. I'd never done it before and I haven't done it since. At that particular time, I was also facing some hardships (nothing like theirs, though), and I also was having to make decisions that other people had always made for me. Perhaps that was why I felt so strongly that I needed to write to the person who'd created these characters.

She wrote back and sent a book club guide and a little note that thanked me for my kind words.