A Q&A WITH LAURA JENSEN WALKER

Briefly introduce yourself.

Hello, my name is Laura Jensen Walker. I’m a rabid Anglophile and the award-winning author of several books, both fiction and non-fiction including the Lefty-nominated DEATH OF A FLYING NIGHTINGALE. In fact, THE POSTMISTRESS OF PUDDLINGTON is my 25th book! Ever since I read 103 books in the first grade, I dreamed of being a writer. That dream finally came true at forty, when my first book was published. (I’m a late bloomer.) I fell in love with England while stationed in Oxfordshire years ago with the Air Force. That’s when I got the glimmer of an idea for this story — a story that finally became a book five decades later. I live in Northern California with my Renaissance-man husband and our two rescue terriers where I drink tea and dream of England.

Hester Smith is such a charming postmistress! What did you enjoy most about writing about her and her village life?

It was a joy to create Hester, the dedicated postmistress who’d lost her fiancé in the Great War and carried on, bringing good news and bad to the people of Puddlington. I knew from the start that Hester was an avid reader and I enjoyed writing her friendships with the other women in the village, from Mary the vicar’s wife and president of the local WI to Minerva Winterbottom, the bohemian lady of the manor. I loved having Hester take young Walter, the London evacuee, into her home and watching their relationship grow through their shared love of books and writing. I also enjoyed sharing Hester’s wartime journal of life in Puddlington.

What do you hope readers take away from the story?

The importance of community, and how women banding together are stronger and can accomplish anything. I’ve always loved the English motto coined in WWII: Keep calm and carry on. That’s what the women of Puddlington did, and what I try to do in my daily life. (Not always successfully.)

What’s a recent book you’ve loved reading that you’d recommend to fans of historical fiction?

Actually, there’s two recent books I’ve loved. Silent in the Grave, the first in the Lady Julia Grey mysteries by Deanna Raybourn set in Victorian England. And The German Sisters by Marty Wingate about two young sisters who fled WWII Germany to safety in England on the Kindertransport programme — the same programme mentioned in Puddlington which Lady Winterbottom suggests as a way for her German friend in Berlin to get her granddaughters out of Germany.