Dear Mrs. Bird

by AJ Pearce

This is a summer best seller and I would say it is a summer read.

The story is about a young woman, Emmy, in London who is living through WWII.  She is working as a  typist in a legal office and as a volunteer Fire Warden (answering phone calls at a fire hall about bomb hits so that fire fighters can be sent out,  She longs to be a journalist covering the war.

When she sees an ad in the paper for a junior clerk at a newspaper she applies and is hired. She wasn't aware that the ad was not for a newspaper but for a women's magazine.  Her job will be to assist the grumpy woman who responds to letters in an advice column.  Mrs. Bird does not want to see any letters that are unpleasant.  The young girl is shocked that so many pleas for advice go unheaded.  She writes back to some of the people and even sneaks in a couple replies she has penned as Mrs. Bird never reads the paper.

Emmy is engaged but one day her soldier fiancee (whom she has known since she was a child) wires her to tell her that he has fallen in love with a nurse and they are getting married.  She is of course devastated.

Her best friend (Bunty) is engaged to one of the firefighter.  One day Emmy goes to see bomb damage and sees her friends fiancee do something dangerous to rescue a doll for  child.  She chastises him and they argue.  She later tries to apologize but that doesn't go well.

Bunty and her fiancee plan pre-wedding party at a fancy restaurant but Emmy is late arriving because the fire hall is shorthanded and she has to wait for other people to show up to cover for her.  She is horrified when she finds that the restaurant has been bombed.  With the help of her boss, whom she happens to meet on the scene, she is able to find her injured friend, but not the fiancee.  They later learn that the fiancee was killed.

Emmy goes to visit Bunty in the hospital but Bunty tells her she never wants to see her again as she blames Emmy for her fiancees death.  He had gone to look for Emmy when she hadn't arrived at the party.  Emmy keeps writing letters to Bunty but Bunty doesn't contact her.  Then one day a letter arrives at the women's magazine which sounds very much like Bunty's situation.  Emmy takes another risk and submits her response into the paper.

Emmy's employers find out what she has done and are going to fire her and possibly press charges as she was signing the letters she sent as Mrs. Bird.  She is called into the Managers Office and he reams her out.  She is sure she is going to be fired but Bunty rushes into the room (how did she know about this meeting). She says it was she who had written the letter to the paper and she really appreciated the reply. She has forgiven Emmy.  Emmy's boss mentions that sales of the magazine have risen since Emmy has been including some of her letters and the response she sent to Bunty got picked up by other newspapers. He also mentions that Emmy had been assisting him with some writitng and coming up with stories more appealing to young women. The owner says she can stay if sales increase even more in the next few months.

This was a light read, entertaining but predictable.