Summary: 

After losing both his sons in combat during World War II, Edward Angus Kennedy did something positive with his grief. He took a request from his employer, the Northwest Paper Company of Cloquet, Minnesota, to collect names and addresses of their employees in military service and turn it into a letter-writing mission. 

Kennedy wrote newsy, upbeat four-page letters every two weeks from July 27, 1943, to the end of the war, fifty-seven letters in all, claiming "Mail is what they want most." His letters told of the weather, sports, hunting and fishing, and local happenings. Those receiving the letters wrote back with their news, which Kennedy then shared with the group of addresses. These letters served as a lifeline for men and women adapting to wartime assignments far from Cloquet. The moral of many of Carlton County's Men and women in uniform weathered the war because they were connected to home and friends through Kennedy's letters. 

The local newspaper provided Kennedy with ready sources that shared snapshots of life at home as residents coped with war-fraught change: food, fuel, and merchandise rationing; shortages of necessities and luxuries; and the need and effort to keep the three Cloquet-based defence industries functioning. 

In this volume, Kennedy's letters and the local newspapers tell the story of World War II in one small Minnesota community, the way it happened week to week.