Shirley Fern is a seventeen year-old woman who has fallen completely in love with her teacher. Mr. Tiller is a quiet man with a slight limp, a quiet nature, and a secret. According to village gossip he is “not a real man.” Shirley doesn’t care, and has started to plan to become a teacher herself so she can return to the village, marry the object of her affection, and settle down to a quiet life. In her teenage obsession, she finds herself at Mr. Tiller’s after dark and discovers his horrible secret. As rumored in the city, he is not all man and his secret may be the key to protecting the world or leading to it’s ultimate destruction. Shirley must carry out his requests in a blind attempt to win his affections and help protect the world, but she soon discovers that what Mr. Tiller thinks may not be the best for her world.
Aliya Whitley follows up her story The Beauty with similar themes of discomfort and loss of masculinity in The Arrival of Missives. With a culture that often encourages older men with younger women, even the small age difference between Shirley and Mr. Tiller is a chasm of discomfort. Her relationships with men her age are even more uncomfortable. This story has a Shirley Jackson-esque style that leaves the reader quickly turning pages and hoping for the best and realizing the worst may be coming.
The Arrival of Missives is now available from Titan Books.
