Author Jo Taylor offers a moving novel based on a true-life tale of love and sacrifice that includes letters taken from real life.

Mimi and Maurice are distant cousins who begin corresponding in 1924 to help their foreign language skills. She lives in San Francisco, while his home is in Belgium and the Congo. Although they have never met in person, he asks her to marry him. She never directly commits to this.

Meanwhile, realizing he won’t be able to visit America to see her for about six years due to his military service, Maurice decides to marry another. Still, Mimi and Maurice continue to correspond.

After Maurice and his wife divorce, Maurice proposes to Mimi again. This time she agrees, but they can’t be together for three more years due to his service. She keeps their engagement a secret from her family and plans to meet him in Belgium in early 1940, but by then, the Germans have occupied the country and it isn’t safe to travel there.

Maurice’s life is in constant danger as he works for the Belgian resistance, and the war puts an end to the letters that Mimi lived for. In a state of uncertainty about Maurice’s whereabouts, she and her father and sister struggle to navigate the war years in America. But even after the war ends, life will never be the same.

Taylor intersperses excerpts from Maurice’s letters into the narrative, especially in the book’s first part, which is told from Mimi’s perspective. This section is a bit slow moving, but the story picks up steam in its latter half, which alternates between Maurice’s and Mimi’s viewpoints, especially as the author vividly describes the horrors Maurice faces as part of the resistance. It would have enhanced the story to have Maurice’s perspective woven in throughout.

Nonetheless, this is a touching portrait of the pain of war and two people who loved each other despite all the obstacles.

Also available in hardcover and ebook.