Mimi and Maurice: A Novel, Based on a True Story

Between San Francisco and Belgian Congo, between war and silence . . .

It is 1936. Mimi lives in San Francisco, in a house she shares with her father and sister, writing letters to Maurice-a distant cousin she has never met. Maurice is in Belgian Congo, settling the estates of Europeans who die far from home. They have no shared memories, only paper, ink, and the weeks it takes a letter to arrive.

They write. For years. Three hundred and eighty-two letters survive.

Between us, an ocean, two co...