You know you’ve discovered a good book when you mention said book to a coworker and the coworker’s eyes light up while they demand you send them the author’s name and titles ASAP. Another sign your book is a winner? Seeing Coworker’s shoulders slump when you explain “oh golly gee…you can get them from the X and Y libraries…once I return my inter-library loans…”. But Coworker forgives you because they’re just as big an Anglophile as you are.

Now what book had Coworker plotting just how fast I could read and return a certain book? Henrietta’s War: News from the Home Front 1939-1942 by Joyce Dennys. I’m not certain I might have stumbled across this little charmer without Amazon’s Customers Also Bought Items By while I was bemoaning  how very budget wrecking snapping up E.M. Delafield on Kindle would be to my wallet. The local library system had a few of Joyce Dennys’ books and the descriptions seemed interesting, so what did I have to lose?

Like her fellow Andre Deutsch Limited author Helene Hanff, Joyce Dennys was doing a spring clean one day when she came across some old writings from World War II. But instead of the relatively anonymous Helene Hanff’s letters to a London book shop, Joyce Dennys’ old writings were from her articles published in each issue of Sketch magazine, letters from an imaginary Doctor’s wife in the countryside writing about life at home to her childhood friend Robert fighting in the war. Our Doctor’s wife, Henrietta is a faithful correspondent, giving Robert all the little details about her daily life with the Doctor (Charles), her two grown children Bill and the Linnet, their dog Perry and all their friends and foes in the village.

I’m very tempted to burble on and on about the charming writing, the rough little sketches in each letter (done by Joyce Dennys herself) that even though they are just rough little sketches, you can get the warm and loving nature of Lady B in all her Helen E. Hokinson like club woman glory and the glamorous divorcee Faith who oozes a magic spell over everyone like a Peter Arno showgirl. So yes, burble I did. Henrietta’s War: News from the Home Front 1939-1942 really is truly charming. You get a look at a way of life that is vanishing and how the everyday residents of a seaside village are coping with the upheavals. Liquor is in short supply but Charles manages to scrape up some sherry to offer to Lady B and use the ends of this and that for Christmas cocktails. During Marmalade Week, the residents are wondering how they will make their usual bounty with restrictions on sugar. Village glamor girl Faith has the idea of using saccharine tablets in place of the desired sugar. Her plan is flawed but it’s a plan. But a war isn’t going to keep our villagers from their rounds of visits and parties even if face powder and stockings are soon to be in short supply.

Henrietta’s War: News from the Home Front 1939-1942 is a slim book and before you know it, you’ve devoured Henrietta’s letters to Robert and have questions plaguing you. Will Henrietta get to join in war work or is she just doomed to tend house and dig in the garden with a hot water bottle on her back until the war ends? Will Faith’s devoted suitor The Conductor ever get Faith to be all his? Will Lady B keep being the utter rock of grace and sense in wanting to defend her beloved country? But worry not, because there’s a second Henrietta book, Henrietta Sees It Through: More News from the Home Front 1942-1945.