Where Or When (Tape)

Anita Shreve
Read by Tim Machin, Sarah Gayle

What would you do if, out of the blue, you received a letter from your first love? Sian Richards sees no reason why she can't write back to Charles Callaghan After all, it's been thirty years and they are both married with families. But an innocent correspondence becomes a dangerous intimacy. Swept up in the past and consumed by an obsessive love, Charles and Sian risk everything to be together. Charles Callahan, a 44-year-old Rhode Island insurance broker, is a man who has deep feelings but finds himself emotionally thwarted in the life he leads. He loves his three children, but his marriage to Harriet is passionless. When he chances upon a photograph of poet Sian Richards in the Sunday newspaper, his life changes. Sian was his first love, 31 years ago at summer camp. Sian, married to melancholy, reserved Stephen, has suffered the loss of a child, and, after some hesitation, she allows herself to turn to Charles with the same urgency he feels for her. Shreve evokes this emotional buildup deftly, complete with stirring old songs and flashbacks to teenaged love.