Postcards from the Lake

Before you read

1. A postmaster is handed a bundle of old postcards that were stamped and cancelled but never delivered. If mail reached you decades late, would you feel it was yours to read, to keep, or only to pass along?
2. Small towns often remember the same event in several different ways. Is there a story from your own town that people tell differently depending on who you ask?
3. Cozy mysteries love a community event, like a summer lake festival with lanterns and ribbons on every lamppost. What do you hope a town is hiding behind all that cheerfulness?
4. Many cozy readers love a clever animal sidekick. What do you expect from a cat in a mystery, and what would make you groan?

Discussion questions

Spoilers ahead. Finish the book first.

1. In the middle of the book Tessa realizes that Archibald "pointed at places, she was beginning to understand, and hardly ever at people." Did you read his reactions to Celia, Mona and the tote bag as clues about the people nearby, and how did the raccoon den change your mind?
2. Tessa's first big breakthrough comes from the postmarks, because "ink and paper do not lie the way people do." Later she notices a card postmarked September first that describes something from September second ("The postmark predates the event"). Did you find her postal expertise a fair way to crack the case?
3. Mona slips twice: she seems to know what Laurel's message said before she has seen it, and she refers to "the key" when no one has told her about one. Which slip did you catch first, and did her job on the 1984 staff list, "Mail & Messages," make you suspect her too early or just in time?
4. Tessa and June work out that each postcard's picture points to its recipient, such as the fishing pier for Calvin Bell and the boathouse for Ruth Rook. Did you work any of that out before they did, and what did you make of Archibald sitting on the two cards they could not place?
5. Ruth Rook arrives with her leather handbag full of "the things nobody believed the first time," and ninety-two-year-old Walter Prentiss finally tells what he saw at the ranger station. Why do you think the book leans on these late witnesses, and which of the many silences in this story was hardest to forgive?
6. Dean Pike appears on the 1984 staff list as "GROUNDS / DELIVERY," with a note about "Backup collection," while Wade's fingerprints on the notebook point the other way. Tessa distrusts that evidence because it is "too tidy and too visible." Did you share her doubt, and who were you most sure of at that point?
7. Celia Voss hides a title company letter, searches the cabinet in the north service building at two in the morning, and admits, "I decided I was tired of deciding." Were you convinced she was hiding something worse than money, and how did you feel about her by the final chapter?
8. The book says there was "no single mastermind, only generations of people making one frightened choice after another." When Mona begged Laurel to stop, Laurel answered, "No, Mona. They did." Does that kind of answer satisfy you in a cozy mystery, where the culprit is both guilty and heartbreakingly human?
9. Daniel reads Laurel's last letter on the dock and laughs through tears that she told him not to feed her goldfish too much, and then the lanterns go onto the lake and Tessa whispers "Delivered." Ruth, meanwhile, learns what became of her brother Thomas. Which ending moment stayed with you, and did the book give you enough comfort after such a hard truth?
10. Eula Mae solves the raffle ticket trouble before eight in the morning, Marjorie DeWitt is sure someone is targeting her petunias, and Sheriff Bartlett and Tessa trade the same teasing lines throughout. How did these lighter threads balance the darker story, and how do you think Tessa and Bartlett are getting on by the end?

Pairing menu

Drink

A mug of cinnamon coffee, the kind Eula Mae brings to the post office in a thermos large enough for a whole sorting crew.

Bite

A lemon bar from Eula Mae's bakery box, the ones she packs with sandwiches when the investigation runs through lunch (or a slice of lemon picnic cake, if you want the lakeside memorial evening).

Setting

A dock at dusk with paper lanterns drifting out across the water, like the lanterns of the Cedar Springs lake festival.