6" x 9" trade paperback, 96 pages
ISBN 0-9767590-5-5
$15.95

Sample Pages

 Contact Bill Holly, author, to purchase the book. 

Love Letters to Spike: A Telegrapher's Lament, With a Brief, Eclectic History of Communications in the Seacoast

by Bill Holly, K1BH 

America was at war - with Mexico. The Portsmouth Navy Yard was on the verge of closure. Herb Waldron was broke, in love with Grace Glen, and had come to Portsmouth to seek his fortune. Grace was great, but both his fortune and Portsmouth were found wanting.

Herbert D. Waldron plied his craft as a telegrapher at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard for three months in the spring of 1914. Over thirty of Herb's letters come down to us today, written to his sweetheart Grace, his beloved "Spike," back home in Hartford, Connecticut. Faithfully reproduced with all their inaccuracies intact, and with author Bill Holly's research and commentary, a young, lower middle class working man's love letters provide a unique snapshot of 1914 Portsmouth and environs. The story is well-illustrated with many rare period photographs and engravings from the 19th and 20th centuries.