A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger,
Occasional Nakedness and Faith

Mailbox is a book you’d love to have nearby at all times. It is reminiscent of childhood fears and triumphs, an amazing ability of a human mind to create and weave a story of life’s happenings, so to say.

You also will find some beautiful and very practical tips. One of the many I enjoyed to go over is about Public Speaking.

Reading short vignettes of Sandy Drue and her amazingly open view of the World around – present and future – I kind of re-lived my own childhood and the years of developing my own view of the world and the Universe.

Some stories will resonate stronger with some of us, as they send us down the memory lane of our own experiences in thinking and materializing our thoughts and dreams.

The book is magical due to the feelings and emotions it evokes. And That is what we call a masterpiece.

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In the aftermath of Nixon’s volatile presidency, Sandy Drue is entering in to the great unknown of adolescence, determined to discover her own meaning of life in this beautiful series of short stories & vignettes.

It’s 1976. The USA turns 200, while scrappy agnostic Sandy Drue turns ten, finds an electric typewriter in her father’s office and begins to churn out page after page on the conflicting demands of burgeoning adolescence and her own quiet search for the meaning of life.

In the wake of the Watergate scandal, American society is in a state of bewilderment, both at home and overseas. Sandy’s friends are learning about menstruation and reading Judy Blume – some in secret, against their mothers’ warnings. The Drue family moves from New York to Small Town, USA where Sandy and her brother try to find friends, avoid bullies, and settle in.

While Sandy slowly realizes that her family may never fully fit in, she finds that writing helps her to understand her own mind and ease her push-pull entry into adulthood. Her parents encourage her curiosity, her imagination, and her challenge of social conventions, but not without cost.

Her New Yorker mother, an artist and intellectual, finds Bible-belt conservatism – and cows, horses, and guns – an uneasy fit. Sandy’s father grapples with financial worries as his wholesaling business battles huge discounters bringing in cheap foreign goods, destroying local, multi-generation stores.

Caught in the middle of this social unrest, between chaos and calm, and the uneasy balance between childhood and adulthood, a now thirteen-year-old Sandy is ready to write her book, aiming to answer the biggest question she faces: whether there’s anyone bigger in charge…

The beguiling second novel from Nancy Freund, Mailbox, is a mother-daughter love story opening a doorway to the universal world of adolescence and self-discovery. Fans of contemporary literary fiction and American cultural and social history will enjoy this delightful story that is hopeful, heartbreaking, and profound in its treatment of life’s larger questions – especially those that matter to a child on the cusp of maturity – revealing our shared need for solace, nostalgia, and good old-fashioned fun.

About the Author

Nancy Freund, Author of MAILBOX

American-born novelist, poet and editor Nancy Freund lives in Lausanne, Switzerland. Raised in Kansas City, she met her future husband, who hails from Bristol, England, when he became her pen-friend at the tender age of fifteen. Freund has a BA in English and Creative Writing and a Masters from UCLA.

Her critically acclaimed debut novel, Rapeseed (2013), dealt with expatriate life and synaesthesia, the brain phenomenon of blended senses. Freund is active in community literacy. Mailbox: A Scattershot Novel of Racing, Dares and Danger, Occasional Nakedness and Faith by Nancy Freund (published by Gobreau Press RRP $20.00 paperback, RRP $6.99 ebook) is available from May 10th, 2015 online from retailers including Amazon and can be ordered from all good bookstores.