The Letters by Anne Marie Appelgren is based on the author’s own experience. It tells the story of a woman trapped in her past. After her mother dies the protagonist inherits old family letters and soon starts her journey to find out how the family situation got so toxic. She finds out about her mother’s childhood in Germany, at the beginning of World War II, and  how the child was bounced between Germany, Finland and Sweden during the war.

The rift between mother and daughter began when the daughter felt stifled and invisible in her home environment and needed to break free. Her mother would never forgive her for this.

The daughter finds out that she is the last link in a series of only daughters. If there were two daughters only one gave birth. Six generations all have at least three things in common; they followed a man to a different country, they all got divorced, except for one who remained in a loveless marriage, and each had a problematic relationship with their mother.