Wind of destiny

Chapter 2: FOREWORD

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About This Book

A framed sequence of real letters by the man known as O. Henry is interwoven with fictional narration and personal recollection to create an intimate, epistolary portrait. The narrator responds to and annotates these letters while recounting domestic life in a mountain town and the anxiety and longing stirred by a young relative’s departure to the city and its hospitals. Letters and reflections shift between keenly observed wit and a wistful nostalgia, contrasting urban allure and small‑town steadiness, and illuminating the correspondent’s character through memory, family scenes, and quiet moral reckonings.

FOREWORD

The letters in this story are real letters. I know this because they were written to me by the man the world knows as O. Henry, author, and only as the author. Not half a dozen people knew the real Sydney Porter, and the man was greater than the author.

There are other letters which are mine own, and no other eyes shall see them. But the letters in this book were not written to me as a woman, but rather to the little girl of his memory who lived next door to him in the street of Yesterday.

The background for the letters is pure fiction. Maybe I have let more of myself creep into this tale than I had planned. If this be true, the reason is that my whole thought centred upon revealing Sydney Porter to the lovers of O. HENRY.

Sara Lindsay Coleman.