Kim Fay’s novel, Love & Saffron, was published in 2022, one of my favorite novels that year. It was subtitled “A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Love”. I picked it up at the time because it was an epistolary novel, told in letters, and I’ll always take a chance on one. Fay’s new book, Kate & Frida, is subtitled “A Novel of Friendship, Food, and Books”. I loved the two main characters, twenty-some-year-old young women, Frida Rodriguez and Kate Fair. Both women want to be writers, and their experiences in the world of books and writing inspire the story. It wasn’t until the end of the book, though, that I realized Frida Rodriguez is the daughter of Joan, the young woman whose food adventures are described in Love & Saffron.

The friendship between Frida and Kate begins with Frida’s 1991 letter from Paris to the Puget Sound Book Company in Seattle, Washington. Frida wants to be a war correspondent, and she’s looking for a copy of Martha Gellhorn’s The Face of War. Kate Fair is the bookseller assigned to find that book for Frida. For two years, the women write to each other as they explore their lives, their loves, books, and food. It’s a period of growth for both as they search for their identities and try to define themselves in a world torn by war and trouble. While Frida experiences war first-hand in Sarajevo, Kate’s family and experiences are no less life-changing back in Seattle.

While I admired both young women, it was Kate Fair who caught my heart with her feelings of inadequacy and her eagerness to read and learn. In the two year period covered in the book, both women struggle and flourish. And, all along, books and writing inspire them.

There are so many lines I could quote from this thoughtful book. But, there’s one line, a quote from Madeleine L’Engle, that might offer the best encouragement to all of us in these troubled times. “It is the tiny, particular acts of love and joy which are going to swing the balance.”

If you appreciate epistolary novels, and haven’t read Love & Saffron, you might want to start with that book. But, you don’t have to do that. Kate & Frida stands alone as a story of two appealing, introspective young women.

Kim Fay’s website is https://www.kimfaybooks.com/

Kate & Frida by Kim Fay. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 2025. ISBN 9780593852385 (hardcover), 288p.

FTC Full Disclosure – The publisher sent me an ARC of the book, with no promises of a review.