Letter from Home, a World War II crime novel set on the home front, has been nominated for the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction by the Oklahoma Center for Poets and Writers at Oklahoma State University in Tulsa.

Teresa Miller, executive director of the Center, describes the novel by Oklahoma native Carolyn Hart as a haunting and memorable story. "Hart has created a fabulous two-in-one: an excellent mystery and the poignant memoirs of her heroine," Miller said. "Characters are Steinbeck vivid, as is the sense of time and place."

Pulitzer Prizes for Letters, including the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, have been awarded by Columbia University since 1917 in honor of the memory of famed publisher Joseph Pulitzer.

Miller plans for the Center to nominate an Oklahoma author for the Pulitzer every year. She notes, "It's the Center's way of championing our state's writers on a national stage."

Letter from Home, Hart's 35th published novel, recently received a starred review in Publisher's Weekly. Her books have twice won the Agatha, Anthony and Macavity Awards. In March, she will receive a lifetime achievement award from the Oklahoma Center for the Book in recognition of her body of work.

From The New York Times
Letter From Home
Carolyn Hart

A persistent sense of loss and longing accounts for the bittersweet tone of Carolyn Hart's LETTER FROM HOME (Berkley Prime Crime, $22.95). Set in a small-town America that lives only in memory, this artfully narrated whodunit observes the residents of an unnamed Oklahoma hamlet over the hot and dusty summer of 1944 as they ration their food, count their war dead and turn on their neighbors. The friendly mood at gathering places like the Victory Cafe and the Blue Light tavern gets ugly when Faye Tatum, a vivacious woman who loves to dance, is strangled while her soldier husband, Clyde, is home on leave. Merciless gossip condemns Faye for her wicked ways and brands Clyde, who has disappeared, as a murderer.

Hart puts a smart twist on her study of the cruelty of narrow-minded moralists by leaving the murder unsolved until years later, when a letter from the Tatums' daughter brings a noted journalist back home. Gretchen Gilman was only 13 and living next door to the family when it was destroyed by the murder and its aftermath. But by writing a sympathetic profile of Faye for the local newspaper (and trying to help Clyde escape the gun-toting defenders of public morality), Gretchen learned both her trade and a costly life lesson. Although the resolution requires that the reader accept illogical behavior from a pivotal character, Hart's delicate touch balances the gentle restraint of a coming-of-age memoir with the hot passions of small-town tragedy.

From Publishers Weekly
Letter From Home
Carolyn Hart, Berkley Prime Crime

Hart has created a fabulous two-in-one: an excellent mystery and the poignant memoirs of her heroine, Gretchen Grace Gilman. A letter received by the now elderly newshound extraordinaire returns her physically, mentally and emotionally to her past and to her hometown in northeastern Oklahoma. As the pages of the letter unfold, so does the story of Gretchen's summer of 1944. With every able-bodied male involved in the war effort, Gazette editor Walt Dennis agrees to give 13-year-old Gretchen a shot as a newspaper reporter. But the sleepy town is soon rocked by the murder of Faye Tatum, an artist and the mom of Gretchen's friend and neighbor Barb. To make matters worse, the prime suspect is Barb's dad, Clyde, home on leave but nowhere to be found after the murder. Political ambitions spur the county attorney and the sheriff to track down Clyde and arrest him, while less hasty Chief Fraser is more interested in first sorting through all the facts. The obviously well-researched history draws the reader into this atypical whodunit. Characters are Steinbeck vivid, as is the sense of time and place. Hart masterfully portrays an American small town during WWII.

From The Oklahoman
Letter From Home
Carolyn Hart

Carolyn Hart's Letter From Home ... sounds like Oklahoma; not that phony hick talk outside authors create, but a subtle, familiar sound of a people and a region. This book feels like a sun-baked Oklahoma summer; a reader can sense the waves of heat over a landscape so dry it crackles like paper pages.

The book's hero is a 13-year-old girl. Teenagers can read it, perhaps, but that would be a loss for adult readers. Hart doesn't talk down to her audience.

The time is 1944, just before America --and Gretchen Gilman -- had to grow up. The town is somewhere in eastern Oklahoma along Route 66. It's small enough that when a scandal happens, everybody knows, and everybody chooses sides.

It's big enough to have a courthouse, a cafe run by Gretchen's grandmother and a daily newspaper. Since most of the men are serving in the military, the Gazette editor must hire Gretchen Gilman as a junior reporter.

During that summer, Gretchen covers a murder and a manhunt and the aftermath of the tragedy. Her friend Barb loses her mother, who loved to go dancing at the Blue Light, and the prime suspect is Barb's jealous father. Most of the local citizens find fault with the victim for bringing it on herself. Barb and Gretchen are hard-pressed to accept the accusations. Gretchen becomes a reporter under the mentorship of a good editor. As she tries to present the story as fairly as possible, she loses friends as well as her childhood.

Hart organizes a clean, clear mystery plot and works it around a character who is as true a 1940s growing-up girl as can be written. This is a departure from Hart's various series of mysteries with reappearing detectives (one a senior citizen). Readers do learn that Gretchen grows up to become G. G. Gilman, international journalist. There's some promise in that for Hart's fans.