This is the story of a man and a woman who meet at the wrong time and fall in love in spite of themselves. Drawn together by words, laughter and curiosity, they build a marriage that is rich in affection but challenged again and again by the ultimately fatal complications of long-term diabetes. After her husband’s death, the author finds herself wandering in the “lonesome valley,” where she begins the difficult journey from grief and loss, back into the light of life.

Readers young and old have embraced Barbara Cooney’s Miss Rumphius, about the lupine lady who made the world more beautiful, since its publication four decades ago. 

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Harry E Hilda: Letters Home is the story of the “real” Miss Rumphius, a headstrong English teenager who leaves home to live with her stern and brilliant uncle in America.

Set primarily in Bristol, England, South Bristol, Maine, and Northampton, Massachusetts, on the campus of Smith College, the book chronicles more than a century of life on both sides of the Atlantic – from two world wars and Hemingway’s Paris to the start of
the space age.

Based on the wealth of written words they left behind, Harry & Hilda: Letters Home brings to light the remarkable lives and times of two unforgettable immigrant Americans.