The Letter Carrier

A Novel

De: Francesca Giannone, Elettra Pauletto - translator

Narrado por: Susan Vinciotti Bonito

NATIONAL BESTSELLER • “[A] five-star read . . . If you love a family saga, sprinkled with historical fiction elements, and strong female protagonists, you need to read this book.”—theSkimm

Discover a little town in southern Italy that might be just like every town—with women and men, husband and wives, fathers and sons, mothers and daughters, all trying to navigate the world while staying true to their hearts.

What would happen if you finally met your soul mate—but they were married to someone else?

Salento, Italy, June 1934: A coach stops in the main square of Lizzanello, a tight-knit village where everyone knows each other. A couple gets off: The man, Carlo, a child of the South, is happy to be back home after a long time away; the woman, Anna—his wife—is a stranger from the North. Carlo’s brother is there to meet them, and he and everyone else can’t help but notice that Anna is as beautiful as a Greek statue.

But Anna is not like the other wives. She doesn’t gossip or attend church. She reads books no one else has ever heard of, exploring ideas that some find threatening. She even wears pants, just like a man, and thinks a woman should have rights, just like a man.

There aren’t many options for a woman with Anna’s sensibilities, so when she learns that the post office is hiring, she leaps at the opportunity. A female letter carrier? It is unthinkable! But Anna passes the postal exam and soon becomes the invisible thread connecting the town as she delivers letters between clandestine lovers, families waiting to hear news of loves ones away at war, and even helping those who can’t read.

Letters connect people, and they convey information and emotion. But for some in Lizzanello, letters are too little and too late.

The Letter Carrier taps into the universal feeling of connection—and what happens when that connection perhaps comes at the wrong time.

©2025 Francesca Giannone (P)2025 Random House Audio

Reseñas de la Crítica

“Francesca Giannone brings the sun-soaked vineyards of southern Italy to life in this transportive and poignant novel. The Letter Carrier, set in the difficult decades before and after WWII, is a lush diorama of a village in flux. At the beating heart of it all is Anna, the rule-breaking, bighearted letter carrier, a woman ahead of her time and drawn movingly from the author’s own great-grandmother’s story. An arresting read by an important rising author.”—Juliet Grames, internationally bestselling author of The Seven or Eight Deaths of Stella Fortuna and The Lost Boy of Santa Chionia

“[S]weeping yet intimate debut novel . . . Giannone’s bittersweet narrative is a testament to the power of connections made and missed, and a sensitive portrait of a woman bravely writing her own story.”—Shelf Awareness

“[W]hen I gobbled up this WWII-era historical fiction over the weekend, it quickly became one of my few five-star reads of the year. . . . Everything about this slice-of-life story was heartwarming and impactful. If you love a family saga, sprinkled with historical fiction elements, and strong female protagonists, you need to read this book . . . I won’t stop talking about it until you pick it up for yourself.”—The Skimm

Not sure why I didn't like this.

It could have been the narrator. To me, her voice didn't fit the story and her intonations were off. The story didn't captivate me at all. I kind of disliked all the characters.

It started out pretty good, Couldn't keep going.

Lush but not unheard of drama

It felt like a story I’ve heard before. Soap opera of layered proportion. Not completely unlikeable but also not adored. Though I wonder if I read it rather than listening to it I could have gleamed more.