Book excerpt: These letters, From Jeanie Arthur to Frank Arthur, were written in the year of their engagement between July 1882 and May 1883. The correspondence served as the inspiration for their great-great granddaughter, Kathleen Shoop's, novel, The Last Letter. Her novel is fiction, of course, but these heartfelt, optimistic love words have their own story arc, and tell an old-fashioned love tale that has a surprisingly modern tone that deserves to see the light of day.