Love Letters / Madeleine L'Engle 302 p.

I took this home after a recommendation from a patron.  Our copy is a new edition; the original came out in the 60s, and the writing and subject matter feel dated in a way that many much older books do not.  Charlotte, a beautiful young woman, arrives late on a wet night to an inn in a small town in Portugal.  It's not clear why she fled New York in such haste.  While at the inn she discovers a book, a published version of the letters of a Portuguese nun to a French soldier.  The story alternates between Charlotte's and Maria's stories, and is really an extended reflection on the definitions of love. This sounds icky, but it wasn't; mostly it was just odd, but L'Engle's writing is always vivid and sympathetic.