Mrs.Sinclair's Suitcase

Mrs. Sinclair's Suitcase by Louise Walters

The suitcase is small, brown in color, with a muted tartan lining. Mrs. Dorothy Sinclair proudly writes her name with a flourish on the label inside, bursting with joy, knowing this little satchel will be filled with all the things her precious baby will ever need. World War II may be raging in England, but her thoughts are only happy ones as she awaits the birth of her son.

Roberta works diligently at her favorite place, the Old and New Bookshop.  Lost in her literary world, she loves to collect the little hidden treasures that seem to appear when she opens a used book; postcards and notes written on paper-thin stationery, yellowed with age, revealing secrets, musings, and tidbits never meant for her eyes. She is lonely and unable to admit her true feelings for her boss, Philip, knowing he is in love with another. This quaint shop where the"books are alive" is her refuge.

One fateful day, Roberta's father brings to her an an old suitcase that belongs to her 109-year-old grandmother, Dorothea Pietrykowski. In it, she finds an intriguing letter dated from 1941 written by Jan Pietrykowski, the grandfather she never knew. The letter chastises her grandmother for making a horrible decision that will haunt her the rest of her life, bringing pain and sorrow to a nameless young woman and her child. "Your soul shall not return from this that you do."  If only she could ask Dorothea or her father about this mysterious correspondence in a suitcase that bears the name of a Mrs. D. Sinclair. But her father is in failing health, and Roberta doesn't want to upset her grandmother who drifts in and out of the past and the present. Perhaps it's best to accept the fact that some memories are not meant to be revisited.

This is a mellow, satisfying, and beautiful story of two exceptional women at two different times, eighty years apart. The stories run alongside one another, and mesh in a truly extraordinary way.  In her debut novel, Louise Walters paints a vivid picture of life in the 1940s. Warplanes flew over peaceful farmland while people below, like Dorothea, struggled to maintain a normal life. Years later, a young, restless woman also struggles to find a purpose in her life, never realizing that the answers may lie in a battered suitcase from long ago.

A rich story of lost and reclaimed love, irreversible decisions, and what might have been.....