In 1936, Mimi begins a correspondence with Maurice, a distant cousin she’s never met, who is settling the estates of Europeans who die far from home in the Belgian Congo. Over the next decade—through courtship, distance, and the Second World War—their letters become the entire architecture of a relationship built on paper, ink, and the weeks it takes a letter to arrive.

​

1. What does the inclusion of an episodic epistolary form allow this story to do that a traditional narrative couldn’t?

​

2. Is it possible to truly know someone through letters alone? What draws two people who’ve never met toward a proposal of marriage?

​

3. How did the slower pace of correspondence change the way you thought about patience, anticipation, or trust?

​

4. How does history—the war years in particular—intrude on a relationship that exists almost entirely in private letters?

​

5. Letters are curated by nature; each writer chooses what to reveal. Whose letters felt more guarded to you—Mimi’s or Maurice’s?

​

6. What did you imagine each of them looked or sounded like before any description was given? How did the format shape that imagining?

​

7. The story ends with a return to San Francisco. How did Mimi justify or resolve her reaction to the outcome?

​

8. If you could ask either of them one question their letters never answer, what would it be?

​

9. What’s lost, and what might be gained, comparing correspondence like this to how relationships are built today?

​

10. Maurice’s actual letters survive; Mimi’s side of the correspondence and the surrounding narrative detail were imagined around them. Does knowing that only one side is real change how you read the completeness—or the truth—of their story?