"When Mattie is given letters by a guest at the hotel in which she works, she promises to burn them. When that guest is found drowned in the lake the next day, Mattie has to think hard about her promise. But Mattie has problems enough of her own as she is growing up and trying to decide on her future. Her desire to be a writer and her dreams of life outside the small rural community in which she has always lived are beginning to overwhelm her. Will Mattie make it away from home? Will she be like her friend and settle to married life or like her teacher and mentor, the poet, Ms. Wilcox, and lead an independent life? An astonishing and heartbreaking novel about a young girl's coming-of-age and the murder that rocked turn-of-the-century America." -- BOOK JACKET
