For thirty years, Andrew Carroll has collected letters, spanning 225 years of American war history. “These letters are America’s great undiscovered literature,” Carroll says.  “They give insight into war and human nature.”

What great timing for me that this article by April White about Carroll’s letter-gathering campaign appeared in the November issue of Smithsonian—just as I’m releasing my book set in the World War II era and focusing on families and staying connected.  Letters play a central role in my story, keeping Connor Conroy and his sister Nora connected to each other and their family on the home front.

Nora’s in Paris at the U.S. Embassy at the beginning of the narrative with the Nazis poised to overrun the city. Connor feels responsible for her circumstances because he goaded her into seeking a career. How could he have dreamed she’d take a job in a war zone? Now he has to decide whether to enlist and maybe get to Europe where he can protect her.

Back to Carroll’s hundreds of thousands of letters (so far).Twice he’s asked Dear Abby to promote his Legacy Project and twice she’s complied. Within four days, thousands of letters had overrun the local post office station.  The letters are now housed in the Center for American War Letters at Chapman University in California.

These are not celebrity letters. Soldiers wrote their own stories in these letters, intimate details of their lives at war and reassurances that “no Jap bullet has my name on it.” Back home, their friends and families wrote about the price of wheat and pork bellies, rationing, collecting rubber, and producing food, uniforms, blankets, socks, and bandages—materiel for the war effort.