In 1948 Clara Brown of Olivia, Minnesota, sailed from Montreal on a steamship bound for Europe. It was the trip of a lifetime, with the added highlight of a visit to Norway from whence her parents had emigrated some sixty years earlier. Ben Brown, Clara’s husband of thirty-four years, remained at home, tending to the demands of business, though he and Clara wrote often during the six weeks she was away. Their letters offer glimpses of Europe in the aftermath of World War II, as well as life in a Minnesota prairie town in 1948, but through them all they speak of two people very much in love and unaccustomed to long separation.

In Letters from the Attic, Chuck Brown, Ben and Clara’s grandson, reproduces those letters in their entirety. He then follows each letter with an essay of his own, weaving it all together in a tapestry of travelogue and history with rich veins of humor running throughout.