A Letter in the Wall

Summary

It's 1971, and Joan Dumann fears her former business partner wants her dead. But her anxiety is less about dying than it is about feeling disrespected and invalidated. As she constructs a letter describing her predicament, she revists her past.

Born into a prominent Philadelphia Quaker family in 1915 and raised with privilege, Joan wrestles with turbulent thoughts and unfulfilled desires, an internal battle often resulting in self-destructive tendencies. When she attempts to push against the norms for women of her time in order to forge her own identity, she is met with resistance. Yet she can be her own worst enemy, alienating those who care deeply for her. Both manipulative and vulnerable, Joan is, like many people, complex and misunderstood.

Inspired by a letter found hidden in the wall of a Pennsylvania home more than seventy years after its writing, A Letter in the Wall moves through several decades and events, from the 1918 influenza pandemic to Prohibition to the Great Depression to Vietnam, as it examines the internal and external factors that influence one woman's journey toward independence and empowerment.