Waiting for War

Sarah Blake's novel The Postmistress explores the same questions as The Sparrow (see below) and one of my other favorite philosophical novels, Albert Camus' The Plague: in the face of crimes against humanity—even when they haven’t yet touched us—what are our responsibilities? What do we believe in? Where do we find comfort? In a gripping story of war and its inexorable effects, Blake’s cast offers a variety of answers.

It is 1940, and Americans are watching anxiously as the German war machine marches across Europe and brutally bombs England. Across the ocean, on the tip of Cape Cod, postmistress Iris James, strait-laced, middle-aged, and certified virginal, takes her work very seriously. " If there was a place on earth in which God walked,” Iris believes, “it was the workroom of any post office in the United States of America. Here was the thick chaos of humanity rendered into order." Blind to the dangers of what is happening in Europe (she sees no reason to cut down the flagpole that a friend worries might lure attackers), Iris insists that goodness and order will triumph, just as the world’s mail will always reach its destination. The war across the sea will test Iris’s faith in an overarching plan and the role she plays in it.

Near Iris lives Emma Fitch, the new wife of Will, the town’s young doctor. Love has given Emma a sense of identity she never had, but Will, following a professional failure, doubts his competence and questions his destiny. Radio broadcasts from London detailing the horrors of the Blitz entice him to leave his home and wife to work in a London hospital. After he leaves, Emma discovers she is pregnant, and all she can do is write letters begging Will to return. Passive and one-dimensional, Emma is not a very interesting character on her own, but she represents “those who stand and wait,” while her husband strikes out in the only way he can against the evil of innocent suffering.