A naive adolescent girl from Ohio desperately seeks comfort and safety by moving to her father's home in Illinois after her parents' acrimonious divorce. Reflecting many of the norms and cultural conventions of small-town Midwestern life in the very early 1960s, Peggy struggles to make sense of her middle-class family's disintegration but finds neither lasting comfort nor safety in either environment. Peggy longs to understand her complex new world, even as she struggles to come to terms with the loss of her old life, a happy and stable life gone mad and turned upside down. Peace-forever a process, never a destination--will take many years for Peggy to achieve; but what will meanwhile both help and frustrate her is the young man whom she loves both because of and in spite of himself. Until his premature death at age 75 years, Joe will unknowingly serve as her guide along the journey of a lifetime as he helps, even beyond the scope of this book, to shape her ultimate destiny. Writing in the epistolary genre and under a pseudonym, the author takes the reader deep inside the psyche and perspectives of Peggy and multiple other persons with whom she associates, many of whom can recognize early-on how tenuous her hopes and dreams of a mutual future with Joe will likely be. This is a story of the effects of disintegrating families and reflects the sting of abuse, betrayal, and the perils of alcoholic behaviors. Beyond all that, this is the story of a teenage girl who will at times frustrate you, amaze you, exceed your expectations--and ultimately break your heart. "Letters to Joe" is a jewel that illuminates and reflects adolescent sincerity and tenderness even in the face of teenage humiliation and rejection. A "must-read" for parents, youth, and anyone who has ever pledged to love another human being unflinchingly from first glance to beyond the grave.
