Discover the intricate dance between societal expectations and personal truth in Dear Everyone. Through 60 letters from 1963, Henley chronicles a year of one woman’s artistic pursuit and personal growth, juxtaposed against a modern-day narrative of ambition and the quest for authenticity.
In 1963, twenty-two-year-old Martha McCaffray set sail for Florence, Italy, to study painting and live a year entirely for herself. In sixty letters home, she chronicled her days of art, travel, friendship, and freedom – a brief window when she chose passion over expectation. Within a year of her return, she was a wife, a mother, and a woman who, unbeknownst to her at the time, would set her paintbrush down for good.
Sixty years later, those letters are unearthed and entwined with a modern narrative of self-discovery. What begins as a portrait of a young woman’s bold year abroad becomes something more – a mirror reflecting the timeless struggle between societal expectation and personal truth.
Dear Everyone is a work of narrative nonfiction that braids Martha’s mid-century letters with a contemporary voice reckoning with the same questions: What does it mean to choose yourself? And what is lost when you don’t?
Henley Carr is an experienced writer, marketer, and creative strategist with a unique vision for storytelling. From corporate teams to public figures and authors, she brings stories to life. For the past two years, she’s been writing her debut narrative nonfiction, Dear Everyone, inspired by discovered letters from 1963 and her own journey of self-discovery. In her free time, she dreams of escapes to Palm Springs, enjoys Slim Aaron’s coffee table books, and spends time with her husband, new baby Scottie, and golden retriever Milli