About the
Book:
Title:
The Secret Letters
Author: Abby Bardi
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
Pages: 165
Genre: Women’s Fiction
Author: Abby Bardi
Publisher: HarperCollins Australia
Pages: 165
Genre: Women’s Fiction
When
thirty-seven-year-old slacker-chef Julie Barlow's mother dies, her
older sister Pam finds a cache of old letters from someone who
appears to be their mother's former lover. The date stamped on the
letters combined with a difficult relationship with her father leads
Julie to conclude that the letters' author was a Native American man
named J. Fallingwater who must have been her real father.
Inspired by her
new identity, Julie uses her small inheritance to make her dream come
true: she opens a restaurant called Falling Water that is an
immediate success, and life seems to be looking up. Her sister Norma
is pressuring everyone to sell their mother's house, and her brother
Ricky is a loveable drunk who has yet to learn responsibility, but
the family seems to be turning a corner.
Then tragedy
strikes, and Julie and her siblings have to stick together more than
ever before. With all the secrets and setbacks, will Julie lose
everything she has worked so hard for?
For More Information
- The Secret Letters is available at Amazon.
- Pick up your copy at Barnes & Noble.
- Discuss this book at PUYB Virtual Book Club at Goodreads.
Book Excerpt:
The casket was a double-wide, with painted flowers on the side like a
circus wagon. Pam said it looked like hippies had scrawled on it with
crayons while tripping.
“She’s at peace now,” one of our idiot cousins said to someone
I half-recognized from when my mother used to drag us to West
Virginia, where she was born. “Just a bunch of goddamn hillbillies
in the Mountain State,” she always said, like she was Martha
Stewart.
“Shut up,” Pam muttered in the cousin’s general direction,
smiling like she was saying something nice. I hoped she planned to
provide snark during the funeral, since I didn’t know how I would
make it through otherwise. My other sister Norma was in the front pew
sobbing. We were keeping our distance from her, not because of
anything in particular, but because we always stayed out of her way
if we could. It didn’t pay to try to comfort her, since anything
you said would be the wrong thing.
The casket was closed, thank God. Our mother had left strict
instructions about this and everything else when she was still
conscious. Even while dying, she was a control freak, and amazingly
vain for someone who weighed just shy of 400 pounds, even with
terminal cancer. “You’re beautiful,” we always said to her in a
Hollywood voice, “don’t ever change.” She knew we were just
messing with her, but she always smiled and patted her hair.
“That’s a hell of a casket,” I said.
“Sure is purty.” Pam’s eyes were red. I hadn’t looked in a
mirror since early morning when I’d slathered on eye makeup, but
I’d been crying all day, too, and probably looked like a slutty
raccoon. “Is Timmy here yet?”
“Haven’t seen him. It’s so crowded.” I scanned the room.
“Did any of these weirdos actually know her?”
“I don’t know. I bet those fat guys were football players at her
high school.” I wiped my eyes, though I knew it was a bad idea,
smear-wise.
“Oh, there he is.” Pam pointed to the back of the room and I
spotted our older brother. He was wearing a dark suit that made him
look like a Mafia don, talking to some blond guy. She tried waving,
but he didn’t notice. His eyes were on the casket. He hadn’t seen
our mother in almost a year, and I was sure it was hard for him to
believe she was gone. Tough shit for him, I thought. He could have
come here when it would have made a difference. Now it didn’t
matter to anyone what he did.
“Is The Asshole coming?” I asked, referring to our father.
“No, he says he has a schedule conflict.”
“Probably golf. You’d think he could at least manage to show up
for this.”
“At least he’s clean and sober.”
“So he says. He’s probably still banging down Zombies at strip
clubs.”
“Try not to be bitter, Julie. It’s unattractive.”
“Bitter? You think I’m bitter?”
As the minister cut in and began to read the eulogy my mother had
probably written for him, my mind started wandering like I was in
grade school waiting for the bell to ring. I tried to concentrate,
but I couldn’t. Every so often I’d tune back in and hear things
that weren’t true. Her devotion to other people. Her service to the
community. Her wonderful family life—I could just about hear her
voice coming out of the guy’s mouth. I didn’t know where she
found him, since she never went to church. I figured he was an actor
she hired to play a minister, and made a mental note to mention this
to Pam.
As he droned on in his phony actor voice, I closed my eyes and
imagined walking through the woods on the hill behind our house. Most
of it was gone now, bulldozed to make room for the townhouse
development just over the ridge. I made a path through the old trees,
and the dogs ran in circles around me. Ahead of me was the pond,
though in real life it wasn’t there any more either, except for the
hints that sometimes bubbled up in people’s driveways. I was going
to dangle my bare feet in the water. I could hide there all day, and
no one would know where I was. Then I would run back through the
trees to our house, with the dogs behind me, and my mother would be
there, and Frank, and Donny.
When I opened my eyes the minister was gone, and some cousin who
hadn’t seen my mother in years was reading from a wrinkled piece of
paper. She was stumbling over the words, maybe because it was Mom’s
loopy handwriting, or maybe she couldn’t read. It was Mom’s life
story minus all the bad parts and made going to high school in East
Baltimore, meeting The Asshole, and having five children with him
sound like an E! True Hollywood Story. Norma was born six
months after the wedding, and it didn’t take a mathematician to
figure out the facts, but the cousin glossed over that, and the ugly
divorce, and finished with the happy ending, my mother finding true
love with Frank and then having little Ricky. Ricky, on my left,
burst into loud sobs. I put my arm around him and he cried onto my
shoulder. I could smell he’d been drinking again. I would have
pulled him onto my lap like I used to, but he was a big boy now. When
I looked at him with his tattoos, dreadlocks, and piercings, I still
saw that cute little blond guy and felt how much we had loved him. We
still loved him that much, but it was complicated.
Pam leaned across me and held his hand. “You’ll be fine,
sweetie,” she whispered to him, though we were pretty sure he
wouldn’t.
About the
Author
Abby Bardi is
the author of THE BOOK OF FRED and THE
SECRET LETTERS. She grew up in Chicago, went to
college in California, then spent a decade teaching English in Japan
and England. She currently teaches at a college in Maryland and lives
in historic Ellicott City with her husband and dog.
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