Words on a Page

A Story of Bigamy in the Marriage-Mad Fifties When she is made executor to the estate of family friend Eva Eldridge, the author comes into possession of a large collection of letters which Eva has carefully bundled up and stored away.  Kept with such conscientious orderliness, the letters and check stubs and notes scribbled on the backs of envelopes form a personal archive, and one gets the feeling that Eva, who never spoke to Simmons about the deep mysteries of her life, had saved these letters, purposely, so that one day someone might make sense of her life.  Eva’s story begins in 1958, when she is working in a cigar stand in the swanky Hotel Boise.  She is slim and attractive, and glamorous in the way that women of that era seemed to be: her long hair is swept into a roll at the back of her head, her dress is nipped in at the waist to accentuate her figure, and ‘open-toe, open-back high heels’ add to her statuesque beauty.  She is also ‘deeply, deeply ...