Joel R. Dennstedt's 3 favorite reads in 2026

• 2024
• 2025
• 2026

One owes it to the author’s generosity — who unrelentingly shares the most intimate details of his parents’ courtship and entry into a rocky, postwar marriage — to read this deeply compelling account with utter respect for the unavoidable invasion of privacy it represents. The narrative is so engaging and addictive, especially with the inclusion of letters written at the time — making this both an epistolary novel and documentary memoir — that the reader cannot resist the temptation to judge and convict the characters for their unavoidable human foibles. However, pursuing that approach does a great disservice to the author and is a major affront to the subjects themselves, for the moments described and the letters shared were never meant for public consumption or scrutiny. As I said, it is a generous act of grace from an author wishing to convey the complexity of life and its consequences for two young lovers seeking to make their way together in a challenging postwar world. The author succeeds magnificently.

Adding to the utterly captivating effect of such intimate inclusion is the vivid evocation of a postwar — indeed, post-apocalyptic — historical reality. I did not expect to be so thoroughly transported into a period of history predicated on events already covered exhaustively in documentary films and movies. However, the war years were one thing; the postwar years were quietly left to themselves. Thus, it was educational and enlightening — especially when witnessed and experienced through the words of actual participants — to feel the past so lucidly in the present. This is a remarkable, noteworthy achievement of historical research, literary narrative, and ancestral reconstruction.

Assembling so much evidentiary material — most of it in the form of actual documents and letters — and weaving it into such a riveting tale is a literary tour de force. One is constantly reminded that these were real people, living real events, unaware of the consequences of their actions, one of which resulted in the author himself. The reader enters not so much a series of recollections as the actual lives of the real people.

A truly impressive accomplishment.

First, I must acknowledge the incredibly beautiful book cover created for this narrative gem. Honestly, that is what first drew me in. Second, immediately upon beginning the book — within the first few pages, actually — I realized I was in the hands of a true master craftsman. Indeed, I was astonished by the amount of descriptive emotion contained in such perfectly concise sentences. It is a major feat to embed such a wealth of information in so few words; only a great craftsman accomplishes that while wooing the reader with deceptively quiet, soothing, seductive words. I’m saying this book is a writer’s dream, reminding those who do this for a living why they do so in the first place: because reading is such an overwhelming passion. Nora Faircloth is an exquisite author whom one will instantly choose to follow. I did.

I want to offer a quoted moment — a character’s perception — from this masterfully nuanced book to illustrate my comment about “deceptively quiet, soothing, seductive words” because it is not just the words that are so expertly crafted but the character revelation they illustrate so clearly and concisely:

The not-looking-up was a thing one only did with a person whose movements one had already decided were not going to require management. Mareth had not, on her own behalf, been on the inside of a not-looking-up in some time.

I shall not talk about the plot. That would dissipate the spell that overtakes — then consumes — the unsuspecting reader. It is not that the plot is insignificant — quite the opposite — but it seems to be evoked rather than constructed; to talk about it here would disrobe the story of its simple, elegant raiment, which quietly adorns the reader who walks dreamlike through this literary marvel. Words can do that. In the hands of a master craftsman, words may do so impeccably, and a reader’s gift is born.

“Social anxiety is fascinating like that: it’s not the big things that break you, it’s the small ones.”

After quickly learning why the title of this marvelous book is not ungrammatical, I came across that little gem of observational insight that immediately made the author and me seem sufficiently simpatico to proceed. Both bits of data made me doubly relax as I waited for the world to do the author wrong. It was inevitable. I knew the small things would pile up, and the vicarious glutton in me couldn’t wait to see it happen. After all, worse for you is better for me, right? I wasn’t disappointed, either in my expectations or in the narrative that followed.

“I was desperately lonely, but the anxiety of human interaction was stronger than the loneliness.”

That line actually had me looking over my shoulder. I knew I was in good hands. After that, it was easy to relax into the hypnotic humor and quiet pathos of another being locked in mortal combat with the self-affronts of life. (I’d met that incorrigible duck before, if only in another guise.) With the relaxation came the pure enjoyment of great humor delivered incredibly well and great tragedy deliberately understated. I laughed out loud, laughed again, and kept on laughing until the end; I shook my head in sadness and disbelief, and kept on shaking it until the end. You see, this book may be predicated on anxiety, but it doesn’t make you anxious. It makes you laugh. And it makes you cry. I laughed and cried because it’s so well told, oh so sad, and so gosh-darned emotively self-revealing. Like life.

By the way, I loved the duck … the book … whatever.