Customer Reviews

Dear Mrs. Lindbergh: A Novel

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I want Amazon guests to know how MUCH I enjoyed Kathleen Hughes' first novel. It got better and better as I read on. At first, I was a liitle distanced by the flying talk, but when it got into the family, I got caught. The relationship between Ruth and Henry was so well crafted. This was a real love affair, with real people, flawed, and disappinted in each other, and yet still ready to go on loving. I thought her description of Ruth's breakdown was so fine. I loved Ruth's father's inarticulate terror. And her mother's quiet strength.

I think I most admired the author's ability to give us a woman who has made hard choices, and who sometimes chose AGAINST her own best interest, and who somehow worked it out. She recognized the supreme value in giving life to the world in her children, but this life was given at some sacrifice, an idea which is so countercultural today.

Margaret's discover of the letters was so poignant, and I really like the relationship between the brother and the sister.

Kathleen Hughes has one more fan.

I started reading Dear Mrs. Lindbergh last night and couldn't stop! It is a searching examination of the challenges faced by the heroine, Ruth Gutterson. Through Ruth, Hughes explores how a woman born in the early part of the 20th century attempts to reconcile the fierce love she has for her children and husband with her passion for flying. Hughes's prose is clean and unflinching, her style underscoring her characters' drive to understand themselves and those they love. Early American aviation history enriches the novel, and through her letters to Anne Morrow Lindbergh, the reader is given a vision of Ruth's psyche and deepest desires. Dear Mrs. Lindbergh is a rarity in contemporary fiction--- Hughes builds her characters and story with grace and quiet, the novel's pull on the reader ever increasing until with the powerful conclusion, we are firmly within this gifted novelist's beautifully evoked world. Bravo to this promising author. I eagerly await her next publication!

I borrowed a line from author Dave Eggers to describe Kathleen Hughes' book "Dear Mrs. Lindbergh." It's an emotional story that only gets better as you read, and such a superb ending, unexpected and perfect.
Everyone should read this book!

One Thanksgiving weekend, when octogenarian Ruth and Henry Gutterson fail to return home from visiting their adult children for the holiday, siblings John and Margaret grow alarmed. Their parents have always been as predictable as the weather. Suddenly, they're missing. With no sign of foul play, it dawns on the brother and sister, finally, that their elderly parents may have run away.

But the heart of Dear Mrs. Lindbergh, takes a step back in time, to early twentieth-century Iowa, where the quiet rhythms of rural farms dictate the days of families that make their living from the soil. Just after World War II, an airplane flies out of the sky and into Ruth's life, landing on the patch of ground where the corn will grow. In that moment, Henry Gutterson, an Air Mail pilot, sees Ruth and falls in love. Ruth's farmer-father isn't overjoyed to lose his only child, but he can't begrudge the couple their opportunity for happiness. Ruth's years have been filled with lonely hours, yearning to escape this small confinement of her spirit. Happily, Henry gives her something to dream about.

Ruth and Henry live on her father's land, as promised, but Henry never relinquishes his flying. He delivers Air Mail on weekdays, returning home on weekends. During Henry's absences, Ruth begins a lifelong habit: writing letters to people she doesn't really know, pouring out her feelings, hopes and disappointments. The letters are never answered. When the opportunity arises to ride along as Henry's navigator, Ruth is thrilled and falls rapturously in love with flying.

When pregnancy grounds the young mother whose heart is in the clouds, the letter writing continues, especially to the wife of Charles Lindbergh, Anne Morrow Lindbergh. Ruth feels a special affinity to the pilot's wife. Lindbergh's wife continues flying even after the birth of her child. Longing for the same freedom, Ruth's letters are full of her wish to fly again. These letters become Ruth's diary, until she stops sending them, although she still writes clandestinely, storing the letters away in the attic.

Henry and Ruth, for all their love of flying, are securely grounded in each other and their sense of family. Marriage has taught them about life's painful compromises and the strength of their love finally allows Henry to "hear" his wife's silent call. Although she is a wonderful, attentive mother, Ruth craves flying, but there is no one to understand, not even Henry. He never knows desperation Ruth feels, fearing she will never fly again.

This intimate book is the compassionate tale of a young woman trying to weave a path between her life and her dreams. The author writes with a simplicity that belies the very complex emotions of her characters, especially Ruth. In their pastoral setting, this fated couple exemplifies the quiet beauty and strength of the heartland. Luan Gaines/ 2004.

This is a very well written story of a young aviator couple in the 1920's. He flies the Air Mail, she is an Iowa farm girl who becomes his navigator, later grounded when they begin a family. The story flips back and forth from the 1980's, when the couple are 80 years old, to their years together during the 1920s, 1930s and 1940s. Much of the story is told in the form of letters to Mrs. Charles Lindbergh, which are never answered. This is a very good story about the strength of relationships, family ties, and how a common passion, flying in this case, can bond a couple. At times very sad and heartfelt, but I am glad I took the chance to read it. Reminded me of "A Thousand Acres" in some ways, perhaps only because of the Iowa farm setting.