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Reviewed by Romuald Dzemo for Readers' Favorite
Dr. Ronda Beaman's A Life in Letters begins with a bout of “Swedish death cleaning.” While sorting through decades of memorabilia, she discovers that in the midst of corsages and yearbooks destined for the trash, there is one kind of keepsake that remains sacred: letters received from friends, family members, lovers, and teachers. This discovery ignites a project to write the letters she never sent. The result is a one-way correspondence that spans a whole life: a wry apology to a classmate she envied; a thank-you to the first-grade teacher; a love letter to her grandfather; sweet notes to her grandchildren and sons, and addresses to unlikely people, including Jane Fonda, Brian Wilson, an ancient Olmec inventor of chocolate, and even her multiple sclerosis in which she cautions: “And frankly, you picked the wrong girl.” What emerges from this project is a spellbinding memoir of a girl raised by teenage parents, a mother, an award-winning professor, and a grandmother.
Dr. Ronda Beaman’s memoir not only captures pivotal moments in her life. It delivers a canvas exploring regret, forgiveness, envy, grief, and gratitude. But what is exceptional is that it conveys the ache of the things left unsaid, making readers think about their lives and the people in them. Her voice is captivating, witty, disarmingly honest, and the self-deprecating humor easily moves the narrative between quiet devastation and laugh-out-loud confessions. An ode to her grandmother lands as powerfully as a letter to her difficult father. A Life in Letters is a unique form of memoir, and the author makes it even more engaging by inviting readers to write theirs, with blank pages at the end of each standalone letter. If there is one major thing I learned from this book, it is this: handwriting carries a person’s presence in ways texts cannot, and reviewing a life through letters brings clarity and closure. This warm and quirky memoir makes a powerful case for putting down the phone and picking up a pen.
