Laura Jensen Walker - The Postmistress of Puddlington

"A single letter can carry a declaration of love, the promise of a new beginning, or news that changes a family forever."

Join host Terry Shepherd for an inspiring episode of "In Conversation" featuring Agatha and Lefty Award-nominated author Laura Jensen Walker. In this episode, Laura discusses her heart-warming historical novel, The Postmistress of Puddlington, set in a quiet Dorset village during the tumultuous years of World War II.

Laura shares the deeply personal journey of writing the novel, explaining how the story served as a safe haven from pandemic-induced PTSD, and how her early days as a young Air Force clerk typist stationed in England planted the seeds for the book nearly 50 years ago. 

Episode Highlights

• The Power of Letters: The emotional weight wartime postal workers carried when delivering devastating telegrams from the war department to their own neighbors.
• Unforgettable Characters: An exploration of the novel's fierce women, from Hester Smith, a timid spinster who comes into her own, to Lady Minerva Winterbottom, a bohemian former suffragette.
• Suffrajitsu: A fascinating look into the real history of suffragettes learning jujitsu to defend themselves, and how this martial art makes its way into the novel.
• The "Genre Butterfly": How Laura successfully transitions between nonfiction humor, cozy mysteries, and historical fiction by remaining strictly character-driven.
• Neurodivergence & New Beginnings: Laura opens up about discovering she is neurodivergent later in life, and how this freeing revelation inspired her forthcoming novel, The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honeychurch.

Books Mentioned in This Episode

• The Postmistress of Puddlington: A gentle, atmospheric read perfect for fans of The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society.
• The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honeychurch: Follow a 70-year-old woman with a love for words and sensory challenges on a transformative journey to Hay-on-Wye, the Welsh town of books. This title is available for pre-order now wherever cool books are sold.

Learn more about Laura and her work by visiting her website at laurajensenwalker.com.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:35

In conversation with Terry Shepard, award-winning broadcaster, narrator, and author, a deep dive into the writer's craft with the artists and support systems who create the stories we love.

SPEAKER_02 0:48

A single letter can carry a declaration of love, the promise of a new beginning, or news that changes a family forever. In Laura Jensen Walker's new historical novel, The Post Mistress of Budlington, Hester Smith knows better than most the extraordinary power hidden inside an ordinary envelope. In 1934, she happily peddles through the quiet lanes of a Dorset village, delivering the hopes, secrets, and sorrows of her neighbors. But when war reaches England's shores, Hester's familiar route becomes a daily test of courage, as she is asked to deliver messages no one should ever have to receive. As battlefield tragedy strikes close to home and a shocking death unsettles the village, Hester joins an unforgettable circle of women, including a vicar's wife and the Bohemian lady of the manor, who must find strength in one another as their world changes forever. Laura Jensen Walker is an Agatha and Lefty Award-nominated writer whose work ranges from lighthearted mysteries to deeply researched historical fiction. We'll also talk about her forthcoming book, The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honey Church, available for pre-order right now, wherever cool books are sold. Laura Jensen Walker, it's great to be with you again. Thanks for the conversation.

SPEAKER_01 2:20

Thanks for having me back, Terry.

SPEAKER_02 2:22

Give us the 411 on how the postmistress of Pudlington came to be.

SPEAKER_01 2:28

So it goes way back, actually almost 50 years. I was stationed in the Air Force in England as a young single woman, early 20s. And at that point, of course, we we had we had just started getting computers, but there was no email, there was no in there was no internet. And as a a young woman stationed overseas, the best thing to get was letters from home. So me and my fellow GIs, we'd go to the mail room. Is there a letter from mom or is there a letter from my sister? And we'd send these letters. And that was our only form of communication. And other than the occasional phone call, but it was very expensive. So that was like twice a year, a birthday and Christmas. And so I, at that point, I had always dreamed of being a writer. And but I'm in the Air Force, I'm a clerk typist in the Air Force. I'm not a writer. And I thought, oh, someday I want to write, I want to be an author. And I thought, I would love to write a story about a young woman in the military and her adventures. And I want to include the letters home. And so that little wisp of an idea started nearly 50 years ago. So I'm giving my age. I turned 70 in a few months, but I don't look it. But that was the impetus years ago. But then as time went on, I thought I'm not in my 20s anymore. I think I want the main character to be the postmistress who delivers the letters. And then, and I really, but I still kept the semi-epistolary feel of it that there are letters throughout the book back and forth. And then I thought, women on the home front. A lot of the men went to war, but the women had to keep things going and everything they went through. So I came up with a cast of characters of five women. And the wonderful thing, I love Lady Minerva Winterbottom. She's the Bohemian lady of the manor. I fell in love with her name first. We have dear friends who live in Dorset, and we've been visiting them for years. And one time she happened to mention her grandmother's name, and I went, Minerva Winterbottom? Can I use that name, please? And she said, sure. So I thought, oh, I just wanted her to be a really cool, a former suffragette and just a cool woman. Then she was born. And then both Hester, the postmistress, very bookish like me, only she has a fondness for Dickens, which I do not. But and then I had the two young women, the woman in the military, Nora, and then her best friend Violet, who becomes a land girl, and then the vicar's wife. So because I'm a pantser, I I characters are always the first thing for me. And then the book unfolds through the characters. So it started almost 50 years ago. And I actually began writing it in the early days of lockdown, when I the world was on fire and we were all scared. What the heck is going on? And I needed to escape to my favorite place in the world, which is England. And when people were doing the right thing, when they all banded together to do the right thing. Let's put up the blackout curtains. Let's do what we need to do. So that's why it came about.

SPEAKER_02 5:19

You have said that your love for words began when you read 103 books in first grade. What do you remember about the moment you first imagined you might become a writer?

SPEAKER_01 5:34

Again, I was five years old in the first grade, Miss Vopolinsky's first grade class in Racine, Wisconsin. And of course, back then it was C. Dick Run, C. Jane, that kind of thing. But I just loved, my dad instilled in us a love of reading. I started reading at just like when I was just shy of four. So I began reading at three years old. And so then to start finding books and going, oh, there's stories. And then they got more interesting, but then C. Dick Jane Run. And I just said, that's what I want to do someday. Someday I want to do that. That dream has been with me my entire life. And gosh. And now Primrose, see, I'm getting confused. The two, the double P books. The Postmistress of Pudlington is book number 25. So it finally happened, and my dreams have been fulfilled, and I'm living the life I love, writing stories.

SPEAKER_02 6:26

You have been called a genre butterfly. Yes. What excites you about moving between mystery, historical fiction, and women's fiction?

SPEAKER_01 6:37

It's always the character. And actually, I have to tell you, Katrina McPherson is the one who dubbed me a genre butterfly, and I had never heard that term, and I went, I love that. But I do, I flip from one to, and it's just a character comes in my head, a story comes in my head, and it's oh, and I will honestly tell you, Terry, my entire writing career has been like a series of happy accidents. My first book was published in 1997, and that was nonfiction humor, what they called domestic humor back then. The title was Dated Jekyll Married Hyde. So it was a delight, it was a lighthearted, funny book about the difference between men and women. I never planned to write that. I went to a writer, I was a journalist, I was I was a reporter, and then I went to this writer's conference and I just started playing around and it just kind of and then humor, and I wrote 10 nonfiction humor books. And then it's no, but novels, I love novels, I love novels. I want to write a novel, but I don't know how. How do you even start? Even though I was such an avid reader, I read at least two books a week, usually. I'm just such a reader, but I was terrified because when you have a dream that you've had since the first grade, what if you don't have what it takes to make that dream come true? What if you don't have the talent? What if you don't have the skill? So I was really, even though I adored fiction, I was so scared to try. And then I went to this conference and the speaker said it was writing a novel. And he said, before you even begin to write, you gotta have an idea how the book is gonna end. And I don't agree with that now, but at the time that freed up my fear, and I went, okay, I left the conference, went and sat outside, and I wrote the opening lines to what became my first chiclet novel. So I wrote funny chiclet. I went from funny domestic humor to funny chiclet, and then I stopped writing for a decade and came back and did cozy mysteries because a friend said, Oh, you'd be great at that. You love England, you love tea, you love a dog, and I went, Oh, I could never do a mystery. Mystery's all about plot, and I'm not a plotter. I'm a pantser. And guess what? I did, and who knew? And then the historical fiction, I just like I said, I love England. I'm such a rabbit anglophile. And you had me on before for Death of a Flying Nightingale, which was my first historical fiction. And I just loved writing that and shining a spotlight on these overlooked women. But the postmistress of Pudlington has been the book of my heart because it was the single most joyous writing experience I've had in my career. Every often when I'm writing, you go, Oh gosh, as a pantser, now what? What happens next? Where do I go? What the heck? And you get stuck and you go, what am I going to do? That never happened with the postmistress of Pudlington. Every day, these women, their stories unfolded, and I say to my husband, Oh, guess what print guess what Hester did today? Guess what Violet did, or guess what? And it was such a joy. So I really love this book a lot because it was a joyful experience from start to finish.

SPEAKER_02 9:39

We're talking about the Postmistress of Pudlington with its author, our special guest, Laura Jensen Walker. And that's her website, LauraJensenWalker.com. Did wartime postal workers receive any preparation for delivering telegrams or letters containing such devastating news?

SPEAKER_01 9:58

That's a very good question. I'm guessing so. All I knew was that I wanted to demonstrate the big difference there was from when she just delivered regular ordinary mail to she had to deliver the telegrams from the war department saying your son has been killed, and you're and there were times when, in one case in particular, it was a friend's son, and she had to deliver that. And afterwards, she just wound up at the beach just sobbing her eyes out because so many of the young boys of the village had been lost. That happened all the time. But and yet at the same time, she was there for them and she was giving them a shoulder when uh sometimes the door would slam in her face because they didn't want to see that telegram. No, they didn't want to know, but that was part and parcel of it.

SPEAKER_02 10:46

Without giving away spoilers, how would you describe Hester's character arc as the war moves from a distant threat to a personal reality?

SPEAKER_01 10:58

Hester was she was raised by she had a dreadful mother who had always wanted a boy and was disappointed that she had a daughter. So she didn't her growing up, she just didn't she felt a lot very less than. Her mother didn't see her, and when then when her parents died, she took over her father's postal route. But she was always a very timid, bookish person. Books were her salvation, that's what she did. Her fiance was killed in the Great War, so she didn't get married, so she was a spinster, as they called it then. But as the war went on, she came into her own. She just grew and she became this very strong, amazing woman. She takes in a young evacuee from London. She'd always wanted children, but she didn't get married. So she takes in this young boy evacue. She helps, she just came into her own. There's a this is a fun part. Later in the book, she learned there was this you're a martial arts person, so you'll appreciate this. Have you ever heard of suffragitsu? I bet you haven't. So in suffragettes, way back when they had to learn this special form of jujitsu to because they were being attacked by men when they were protesting and marching. And so Minerva, the lady of the manor, had been a suffragette. She learned it. Hester ran into, runs into a situation where she needed to learn how to defend herself. So she said, Would you teach me? And so Minerva takes the women of the WI and says, Here, this is what. And so I have a scene, and that was fun to look that up and do that research to find out and to describe how it was done. And because I'm not a martial arts person, I know nothing about that. But that and so then here's Hester, kicking ass. It's like, wow, I didn't plan that for my timid little sweet bookish Hester. But by the time as the book goes on, she is, and she's become quite a force to be reckoned with.

SPEAKER_02 12:54

Why do you think that this book flowed so freely and easily from your muse when I know that some of your 25 books had to be a slog?

SPEAKER_01 13:04

I think because there's a couple reasons. First, it's set in England, which is my favorite place on earth. So it's set in England, and I love everything about England. I love the tea, I love the pubs, I love all of that. But also, to be very honest and transparent, I suffer, I did not know this until the pandemic happened. But due to a traumatic event when I was young, 19, I was attacked, and and I thought I dealt with this for years, and then the pandemic happened, and PTSD just went off the charts. And I was a wreck. And I was so frightened. Back then, when that attack happened many years ago, I was afraid I would be killed. I was afraid for my life. I feared for my life. I coped with that, I moved on, life went on. But then all these years later, suddenly here's the pandemic, and it's now anybody who came up to me and breathed on me could kill me. And I just flipped out. I just, and so that's why I said, I've got to go somewhere safe. Where's safe? In my home, in my backyard, in England. And so I went to a time when, like I said, and when the early days of the pandemic, there was so much misinformation and idiotic behavior and just craziness. And I thought, I need safety. I need to feel safe. And England has always done that for me. And World War II, like I said, when they put up the blackout curtains together, when they did the rationing, when they all worked together. And so I it was that sense of safety and just community that I fell in love with. And these women all doing this stuff that the men were not there to do. And that's, I think, why. I was definitely having a big PTSD episode when I started writing this, but this was my escape and this was my safety.

SPEAKER_02 14:52

Have you found a writing career to be therapeutic?

SPEAKER_01 14:56

Very much so. Yeah, I love it. If I didn't write, I don't know what I'd do. I worked for the state of California for a little over a decade, and I'm I discovered ru in a couple years ago that I'm neurodivergent, which I never knew what that meant. I didn't even know what it was. It can sometimes mean you're on the autism spectrum, but not always. It's if you have sensory issues, your brain just behaves differently than a typical brain. And so there were a lot of things like I could never understand technology. Do it a spreadsheet. When I worked at the state, I had to do spreadsheets. I would go in the bathroom and cry because I said, I don't know how the heck to do that. And I felt so I felt stupid. I felt like I was stupid, but I wasn't stupid when I wrote. The writing has always come, it's just comes out of me naturally. So I knew that I was a good writer and that was what I was good at. But doing spreadsheets or math or technology or science, no, does not fit with me. But I did it, and I'm glad I did, and my husband thanks me daily. Thank you for working for the state because we have good medical now. I'm glad I did that. I got a little pension, a little modest pension, and we have great medical. So I'm glad I did it. But I'll tell you, while I was working, I was just longing to be home writing always. This is who I am. This is what I was created to do, is to be a writer.

SPEAKER_02 16:13

What happened to your self-esteem when the doctor told you that that you're what's going on inside your head? Was that freeing for you?

SPEAKER_01 16:20

It was so freeing. It was incredibly freeing because suddenly I understood all my little weird odd duck quirks that I've had over the years. Like I have, I can't stand I have food texture issues. There's certain foods I cannot eat and won't. There's temperature issues. I can't stand heat at all. And it's like I can't stand crowds and noise. And I go, I like I have to run. And it's like flight, fight or flight. And I just thought I was weird. So to find out that there's actually a reason behind it, it was so freeing. And actually, that segues into that is why I wrote The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honey Church. Because at 70 years old, she's 70 years old, and a lot of me is in her. It's, oh, she has sensory issues, she has these problems. And it's just like I wanted to show a person learning something about herself and then how that unfolds. So it was actually a huge relief to find that out that there's a reason I am the way I am.

SPEAKER_02 17:19

Let's talk a little bit about the pilgrimage of Primrose Honey Church. What can you share about that story?

SPEAKER_01 17:27

First thing I'm gonna do is I'm gonna tell you the opening line because I love it. Primrose Honey Church collected words the way others collected seashells. Primrose love words. Primrose, a lot of Primrose is me, not the whole, not all of her, because she's a curmudgeon and I'm never a curmudgeon, although some people might disagree. But again, I wanted somebody who loved words and loved books. And on my bucket list, we all have our bucket list, I have always wanted to go to Hay on Why Wales. That is known as the town of books. It's just, it's the largest, it's like the largest concentration of used bookstores in the world. And it was created in the early 70s, and now every May they have a huge book festival there. But I've while I was stationed there, I didn't know about it. And on our trips back there, I have a the last time we went, which has been like almost a decade ago, I'd heard of it, but we couldn't fit into our schedule. So I thought, I'm gonna let my character do something that I have not gotten to do that I want to do. And she journeys to Hay on Y, and she's a woman who's fearful she'd never been on a plane before. So she's got a lot of fears, but it becomes this journey of transformation for her. And again, I love showing women come into their own and having their lives changed and have being transformed. And that's what that's that story is, with a huge love of books. At the beginning of every chapter, this just came out of the blue. I thought, oh, that'd be fun because she loves words so much. There is a I start like the first chapter at the top, it says, I want to go through the alphabet. So the first word is abyssidarian, and then there's a definition. And so each chapter, I went through the alphabet, but there was more than 26 chapters. So then I put in Cornish words and English words and expressions. And but that was just so if you love books and a transformative journey, this is definitely something. And being at hand why in uh in the page, I still hope to get there someday.

SPEAKER_02 19:34

What do your readers say that they like best about your writing?

SPEAKER_01 19:41

Usually it's the characters. In my recent cozy from February, it's called The Alphabet Sleuth, which has been said it's the Golden Girls meets the Thursday Murder Club. So I have four very four very unique women characters in a retirement community. But that's got that's funny. There's a lot of humor in there. The opening line, I love opening lines. The opening line to that one was Claire Reynolds hadn't planned to kill a man that day, but sometimes stuff happens. So you're right away like, what? Now, the difference is the postmistress of Pudlington, that was very atmospheric, setting the scene about the place. So there wasn't a funny opening line or a clever opening line. It was just setting, showing her bicycling. But deaf, so when I do my mysteries, it's the humor, but it's always the characters. Even when I read some reviews, although you're not supposed to read your reviews, I know, but we do. They people always say, gosh, I love those characters. They were funny, they were, and in fact, with Alphabet Sleuths, it was the community women. I actually even like that more than them, the mystery, because it was such a cool, interesting group of women and the friendship. And so they talk about how I do friendships and how I bring women into their own. And so it's a lot about the characters. My stuff is very character-driven. With the postmistress of Puddington, a few people have said it's such a lovely, gentle read. Now, there was one reviewer who said it was a little too gentle for me. It's World War II. I was expecting some grit, and I was expecting more like Kate Quinn, is like, sorry, I don't do gritty. So it's a a friend of mine recently said, I like gentle today, the way the world is right now. Gentle is nice. Gentle is a refreshing change. And I'll be honest with you, Terry. I so because you know how much I love World War II fiction and World War II England, one of my favorite books of all time is the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. I've read that at least three times. And it's a completely epistolary novel, it's all letters. But when Severn House, my publisher, came out with Pudlington, in the description they said a must read for fans of the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, and that made me cry because it was like, oh, my one of my favorite books, and you're saying that people who read that have to, so I just was crying and all verklemped because wow. But it's yeah, my stuff is not, I don't do gritty, I don't do dark and disturbing. I actually tried for a new mystery to go dark in one way, and it's it just didn't work.

SPEAKER_02 22:14

The best way to learn about Laura Jensen Walker's work is to visit her website, LauraJensenWalker.com. We've been talking about two stories today: The Postmistress of Pudlington and the forthcoming book, The Pilgrimage of Primrose Honey Church, which is available now for pre-orders wherever cool books are sold. Laura Jensen Walker, thanks so much for the conversation.

SPEAKER_00 22:46

All rights reserved. I'm Lisa Davis. Join Terry Shepherd next time in Conversation.