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Postmarked Baltimore
This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
208 pages, Paperback
First published June 30, 2008
54 people want to read
About the author
Jeff LeJeune
10 books20 followersJeff LeJeune has a variety of interests, including that as a teacher, a coach, an author, and a screenwriter. Having finished his undergraduate schooling in Secondary English Education at McNeese State University (2001), he earned a Master’s degree in English at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (2017) and a professional certificate in Geographic Information Systems at Michigan State University (2018). He has been an English teacher for 16 years, including in his current positions at South Beauregard High School and McNeese State University.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
March 31, 2019
Dark and mysterious! The author does a great job at keeping you guessing throughout. I'm also a sucker for an imperfect love story and enjoyed reading bits and pieces of Perry and Noelle's relationship throughout and it all finally coming together in the end. I also liked that the main character, Perry, wasn't perfect. I actually didn't like him all that much until the end! He had faults and I understood his faults more towards the end of the book. I loved Noelle the whole time. What an enjoyable and great read!
February 21, 2009
On New Year’s Eve, 1989, Father Perry Burns sits, haunted by his many regrets. Fifteen years have elapsed since he fled, without a word, from the woman he loved, the result of a shameful indiscretion. Father Burns has just received a letter from Noel, who managed to trace his whereabouts. Recently widowed and a mother, Noel fills in Perry on her life and also expresses the hurt with which Perry left her. She is over him, she writes, but still loves the memory of what they shared.
A great portion of Postmarked Baltimore is told in flashback, as Perry relives the events that led up to his decision to join the priesthood.
Author Jeff LeJeune relates Burns’s story with great sensitivity, creating in Burns a protagonist who is mostly unlikable and tormented, while allowing the reader to catch an occasional glimpse of Burns’s goodness ― a man driven to do what is right yet fearful of hurting Noel, a slave to his baser drives, and filled with self-loathing the result of his salacious thoughts as well as his actions. Like many addicts, Burns is driven not so much by an evil nature but by an inability to help himself.
Neither lying to Noel nor coming clean are options to Burns, and so ultimately it is cowardice that propels him into seeking asylum in the clergy, even as he convinces himself that it is because he can’t bring himself to hurt Noel by confessing his infidelity.
At times Postmarked veers into dangerously close to melodrama, but the reader forgives the occasional indulgence for more frequent moments of near brilliant prose:
Sometimes it can be more difficult to forget memories of things that never happened than things that did; the ones that never happened are stainless, fashioned and refashioned in the mind until perfection is attained. Those images of him and Noel together had been arranged like a restaurant table setting, neat and tidy and ready for use and feasting. Instead, he was forced to sit at the table and avoid the setting and the food. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t even touch the silverware. No one told him he couldn’t leave, but he couldn’t unfold his limbs into a walking posture either. There was no closing time. So he just sat there while the waiters waited and the managers managed and the closers closed, bogged down and slumped over in front of the perfect dish he couldn’t eat. He couldn’t even touch it. It wasn’t real. And that is the knife that slices men to pieces when our plans with love don’t materialize. It’s not real. Never was. But you swear it had been at one time, just last week, just yesterday, hell, just a minute ago. All of it was real.
In the end, Perry Burns faces down his beast of darkness, manifested as the stranger sitting across from him in his study, taunting him throughout the text for his weakness and lack of resolve, and decides to do what he should’ve done fifteen years ago, and the reader is left to consider that over which Perry tormented himself for so long: Noel’s response to his confession.
Sometimes our greatest fear is fear itself.
Recommended reading.
J. Conrad Guest for The Smoking Poet
A great portion of Postmarked Baltimore is told in flashback, as Perry relives the events that led up to his decision to join the priesthood.
Author Jeff LeJeune relates Burns’s story with great sensitivity, creating in Burns a protagonist who is mostly unlikable and tormented, while allowing the reader to catch an occasional glimpse of Burns’s goodness ― a man driven to do what is right yet fearful of hurting Noel, a slave to his baser drives, and filled with self-loathing the result of his salacious thoughts as well as his actions. Like many addicts, Burns is driven not so much by an evil nature but by an inability to help himself.
Neither lying to Noel nor coming clean are options to Burns, and so ultimately it is cowardice that propels him into seeking asylum in the clergy, even as he convinces himself that it is because he can’t bring himself to hurt Noel by confessing his infidelity.
At times Postmarked veers into dangerously close to melodrama, but the reader forgives the occasional indulgence for more frequent moments of near brilliant prose:
Sometimes it can be more difficult to forget memories of things that never happened than things that did; the ones that never happened are stainless, fashioned and refashioned in the mind until perfection is attained. Those images of him and Noel together had been arranged like a restaurant table setting, neat and tidy and ready for use and feasting. Instead, he was forced to sit at the table and avoid the setting and the food. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t even touch the silverware. No one told him he couldn’t leave, but he couldn’t unfold his limbs into a walking posture either. There was no closing time. So he just sat there while the waiters waited and the managers managed and the closers closed, bogged down and slumped over in front of the perfect dish he couldn’t eat. He couldn’t even touch it. It wasn’t real. And that is the knife that slices men to pieces when our plans with love don’t materialize. It’s not real. Never was. But you swear it had been at one time, just last week, just yesterday, hell, just a minute ago. All of it was real.
In the end, Perry Burns faces down his beast of darkness, manifested as the stranger sitting across from him in his study, taunting him throughout the text for his weakness and lack of resolve, and decides to do what he should’ve done fifteen years ago, and the reader is left to consider that over which Perry tormented himself for so long: Noel’s response to his confession.
Sometimes our greatest fear is fear itself.
Recommended reading.
J. Conrad Guest for The Smoking Poet
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
October 30, 2015
Emotional roller coaster!
Postmarked Baltimore is a novel full of twists, turns and most importantly a roller coaster of emotions. I laughed, cried and at times gritted my teeth in anger at the choices the characters made throughout this novel. The mark of a truly gifted writer, in my opinion, is being able to make the reader feel connected to the characters. Jeff LeJeune was able to paint vivid word pictures which did just this. I have already read the book twice and each time I come to a greater understanding of what motivates the characters to make the choices they did. I highly recommend this novel.
Postmarked Baltimore is a novel full of twists, turns and most importantly a roller coaster of emotions. I laughed, cried and at times gritted my teeth in anger at the choices the characters made throughout this novel. The mark of a truly gifted writer, in my opinion, is being able to make the reader feel connected to the characters. Jeff LeJeune was able to paint vivid word pictures which did just this. I have already read the book twice and each time I come to a greater understanding of what motivates the characters to make the choices they did. I highly recommend this novel.
December 6, 2015
This is the second book I have read by Jeff LeJeune, and the complexity of the inner turmoil was evident from the very beginning. It is deep and dark all the while delivering an underlying challenge to look at yourself and your personal walk in your faith. I was completely drawn into the story from the very beginning, and would highly recommend it to any of my friends and/or family.
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August 11, 2017As the author of this book, it is difficult to assess its worth, having read it so much in the revising and editing processes. I do feel, however, that it is a powerful story, one that I am very proud of.
September 20, 2008
Great story....I couldn't put it down.
August 18, 2008
A truly haunting novel. The intimate scenes with Perry and his love still permeate in my mind months after reading this book.
October 20, 2008
i wanna read it ...... so bad
December 24, 2008
good book especially for holiday time of the year.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews