cover image Letter to My Husband

Letter to My Husband

Jill Truman. Viking Books, $10.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-670-81760-3

After her husband Tony died in 1975, Truman kept a notebook in which she wrote to him about her feelings as a young widow facing a future in which she alone would have to bring up four small children and learn to handle slim fiances and innumerable daily problems. Put aside in 1976, the notebook was rediscovered a decade later by the author; its publication allows readers to see how the bereaved young Englishwoman gained courage from this ""communication, my lifeline.'' The messages are full of love and longing, but are in no way sentimentalized. Sometimes she criticizes Tony: ``Five of us, and you go and die. Typical of your bloody-mindedness.'' Sometimes she grieves for him, rather than herself: ``You have lost everything.'' We watch with admiration as this gritty woman copes and grows strongeralthough, as she says, life is never the same. In an afterword, Truman offers assurance to other women who have lost their husbands: ``It will be okay. You can be happy again. But it may be more different than you could possibly imagine.'' (July 16)