Andrea Della Monica

Eleanor's Letters Andrea Della Monica

Eleanor is a little girl lost. Eleanor's Letters is a novella that explores the complicated relationship a young woman has with her father. Abandoned as a child, Eleanor is detained in a juvenile facility in upstate New York in the late 1940s. The elusive Anthony Birli, a womanizing Italian dock worker, plays with his daughter's heart through the years. Her letters paint a portrait of a life she hopes that will make her father proud, but occasionally the troubles she is experiencing pour out of her heart and onto the paper. She masks the complicated love-hate relationship she has with her own abusive, alcoholic husband and rowdy sons. Eleanor is as savvy, as she is beautiful, but lives in a society that does not reward female independence. Her suburban life in Florida is less that perfect. In short, she is the ultimate outsider, unable to form meaningful connections with her mother or brother, who is harboring his own deep secret. Just when she makes peace with her father's legacy, Eleanor makes a tragic choice, one that may have been foreshadowed.