The Lost Letters from Martha's Vineyard by Michael Callahan

The Lost Letters from Martha’s Vineyard by Michael Callahan begins with a quote from Gabriel García Márquez: “Everyone has three lives: a public life, a private life and a secret life.”  This succinct epigram neatly sums up Edith (Edie) Stoppelmoor born and fled from Beatrice, Nebraska, otherwise known as “Nan” to granddaughters Claire and Kit. The girls were nine and seven when their parents died in an automobile accident and Edie took responsibility for raising them. Strict but fair and fun-loving, she attended every school program and other significant rites of passage for the girls. 

Nan was the stabilizing force who encouraged them to love the theater and museums equally with nature and passed on her skill for baking the best, most fragrant and delicious vanilla apple pie served for every family occasion. She trained those bright girls to be independent thinkers, self-reliant and brave explorers unafraid to ask questions.  Her guiding principles would prove essential after her death when Kit began her quest to discover the carefully concealed Edie. 

Bound by Blood, Divided by a Long-Held Secret

Her grandparents’ gracious, traditional colonial home was situated at the water’s edge in a Rye, New York neighborhood of historically significant homes not distant from the childhood home of Founding Father John Jay. Nan loved Long Island Sound, the ocean breezes, the views from their house and lawn and the tangy smell of the salt air. 

Kit and Claire were aware of merely the superficial aspects of her life: She had moved from Nebraska as a young woman, then attended secretarial school in New York City before working as a clerk typist in a law firm where she met her husband. Once married, she retired from the workforce to raise their son. However, her past contained secrets that were deep, dark and well obscured from her late husband, son and granddaughters. 

After Edie’s death, her granddaughters worked together to sort and divide the contents of the house prior to listing it for sale. Kit tackled the attic where a dusty old trunk yielded up gobsmacking surprises among the scattering of photographs, letters, souvenirs and mementos it contained. 

Nearly 60 years earlier, their recently deceased grandmother is unmistakably identifiable having been an up-and-coming Hollywood actress named Mercy Welles. After relocating from Nebraska to Los Angeles, she had done some modeling and landed a few commercials before to breaking into films. By the summer of 1959, the now glamorous young woman had been nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Academy Award for her third film and was engaged to a budding director. 

Mysteriously, just as she was poised on the verge of full-blown stardom, she vanished. Kit O’Neill, a junior Manhattan based television producer puts her life and career on hold to investigate her grandmother’s past based solely on the meager handful of clues that survived. 

Diving Into a Mysterious Past

There are many stumbling blocks to discovering the truth as the sands of time relentlessly erase the tracks of the past. Kit travels first to Hollywood where she gains an invaluable ally in an eager and persistent research librarian at the Margaret Herrick Library of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences in Beverly Hills. Their holdings have amassed since 1928 when the first Oscars were presented and more recently a large portion of the collection had been digitized. 

Breakthroughs come slowly as Kit is introduced to 90-year-old Cass Goldman, a mentally acute and active resident of the Motion Picture & Television Fund retirement community in Woodland Hills, California established for senior members of the film and television industry. In 1959, Cass had been a sharp-talking, snappy dresser, script girl and Edie’s best friend whom she swore to secrecy. A poster of a summer stock play in Martha’s Vineyard stored in the box prompts Kit to travel to Massachusetts and pose additional probing questions. 

The island population has grown significantly since Mercy’s time there but still retains a tightly-knit core community of full-time residents whose roots extend back to the 17^th century. Some of these families remain territorially suspicious of outsiders and will stop at nothing to protect their own.

Told Across Multiple Timelines and Perspectives

The Lost Letters of Martha’s Vineyard will keep the reader in suspense until the final pages. The novel is somewhat unusually narrated in first person by vivid characters Edie/Mercy and granddaughter Kit, augmented by her letters written to Cass and Kit’s quest and related in parallel timelines taking place in 1959 and 2018. 

Michael Callahan has concocted a fascinating tale of ambition, intrigue and romance. Drawing on his extensive knowledge of old Hollywood he recreates the atmosphere of the era with detailed descriptions of real people and places. One such hangout was the Musso & Frank Grill, in continuous operation since 1919 with their Back Room reserved as a private space for the Hollywood elite by banning photographers and autograph seekers. The novelist wrote the acclaimed non-fiction book The Musso & Frank Grill, replete with photographs and an introduction by best-selling author Michael Connelly. 

By 1959, the relatively unknown young Rodney Dangerfield was already Frank Sinatra’s friend and favorite “insult comic”. Frankie Avalon’s first #1 hit Venus spent 16 weeks on the Billboard 100 Chart.  The Golden Age of Hollywood with stars and players contracted to and controlled by the studios had ended. Stars and their agents vied for higher salaries and/or points; competition was fierce, demands high and the working hours long. Fresh-faced young women continued to be exploited with casting couches in lieu of auditions. 

Mercy Welles enjoyed the work but disliked the phoniness and game-playing.  Her early experiences had provided adventure sufficient for her to be fulfilled with an active albeit calmer life as the suburban wife of a successful attorney but what an adventure it had been!

Michael Callahan’s intriguing novel The Lost Letters from Martha’s Vineyard serves up a plethora of drama and is an excellent choice for anyone’s summer reading material.  You might find yourself planning an off-season vacation to L.A. or Martha’s Vineyard after dreaming about these locations.