This is a passion I work on seven days a week, ... I'm in this for life.

When they first started doing these, ... a lot of women would kiss the envelopes with lipstick just the way they do with love letters. So as they were going through the processing machines, the lipstick would build up and it would jam the machines. So they had to do Public Service Announcements saying, 'Please don't kiss your letters!' It was called the Scarlet Scourge.

This is the historical record. These are the eyewitnesses to these events, so no one can ever say this didn't happen or it wasn't like that. This tells us it happened in a very immediate and quite graphic way.

You get a sense that the letter-writer is in a groove, pouring out these words that give you insight to what this person is thinking.

I think the writing for this book is extraordinary. And that's why we call it 'Above and Beyond,' because it really is above and beyond what we expected. Writers like (Kurt) Vonnegut and Tim O'Brien waited years after their service to write their books. There's an immediacy and rawness to this book that makes it so compelling.

It draws us into their story. There is that sense of mystery, of what was that person thinking and what happened to them.