Letters to a Loved One

I have told this story to friends of a friend, this urban legend. I will start by saying that

September had never been so tired as it was in 1945.

It was God's will, the town lacking a legalized draft in the midst of war. It was always peacetime, so sayeth the law, the law held as word. Telly and Mckenzie, tutor and student, spent their days speaking of artistic rituals and arguing opinions. Telly was reluctantly coming to term with the fact that he would never be as good an artist as Mckenzie. Instead, he took jobs at community colleges and wrote himself into plays, never expressing another desire. Mckenzie was turning eighteen, a dangerous age for most, but not for him. Not in that safe environment where nothing could hurt him.

They also said that a teenage boy wants nothing but heroics. But with no draft, no machine guns, no mud tracks, dead friends, or bombs, it felt like peacetime.

There was no draft, but there were volunteers.

At turns both allegorical and lyrical, Hannah Duffy's debut captures the world at a time of upheaval and uncertainly through the eyes of two young men.