The Hatbox Letters by Beth Powning
Knopf Canada 2004, available in paperback by Vintage Canada

"...a deeply beautiful book...a stunning debut." The Globe and Mail

In this beautiful and deeply moving novel, a young widow struggles to come to terms with her solitary life in the rambling Victorian house she shared until recently with her husband and children in semi-rural New Brunswick.

It is in this house, surrounded by heirloom gardens and the gentle sounds of a river, that Kate Harding, 52, faces her second winter since the untimely death of her husband. Her children, now grown, are living away, and Kate is truly on her own. In her living room are several hatboxes filled with letters and other ghostly ephemera, recently brought by her sister from the attic of their grandparents’ 18th-century Connecticut house.

In The Hatbox Letters — which is both sad and exhilarating, touching and illuminating — Beth Powning offers readers an unforgettable story of love, grief and renewal, both past and present, as well as her extraordinary perceptions of the natural world.