Polly the Pagan: Her Lost Love Letters

What if you discovered a dead woman's letters, and they were the most entertaining thing you'd ever read? That's the premise of this charming early-20th-century gem. The narrator stumbles upon Polly's correspondence in Paris, and from the first page, she's hooked. Polly is an American girl abroad, sharp-tongued and unapologetically flirty, and her letters chart a course through the glittering expatriate underworld of Rome and beyond. But it's her encounters aboard a steamship with a Russian prince that set the narrative on fire. The letters crackle with wit, cultural friction, and the intoxicating vulnerability of falling for someone you shouldn't. Anderson writes with a comic precision that feels surprisingly modern; these aren't breathless Victorian sighs but actual funny observations about foreigners, food, and the absurdity of romantic gamesmanship. The journal entries add texture to Polly's adventures in the expatriate community, revealing her as both observer and spectacle. It's a love story told in fragments, which makes it feel almost archaeological, like piecing together a woman's inner life from the evidence she left behind. For readers who want romance with brains, and comedy with heart.