The literary device of letters or diaries speaking across the years to someone from a later time is as old and hoary as fiction itself. To Beth Powning’s considerable credit, The Hatbox Letters makes the premise seem fresh. Her main character, Kate, is sent a stack of old hatboxes from her late grandparents’ house in Hartford, Connecticut. The boxes contain papers no one else has the patience to sort through. The task comes at a fortuitous time, and is perhaps shrewdly intentional, as Kate, awash in grief over her husband’s recent death, badly needs something to anchor her to life.

Through a New Brunswick winter and spring, Kate’s neighbours, friends, and garden come into sharp focus; at other times, the lives of previous generations move to the fore. Powning hooks her readers early on with the unsettling discovery that the great passion of Kate’s grandfather’s life was not her adored grandmother but a sister who died young. As Kate digs through the hatboxes for clues and answers, her own stalled life begins to shift. She reconnects with a man from her past, now back in New Brunswick as publisher of a local newspaper. His expectations and Kate’s reactions to his attention threaten her hard-won equilibrium.

Powning, who lives in Sussex, N.B., is the author of several non-fiction books, but this is her first novel. The writing is highly sensual, painterly even, vividly portraying the natural world and its changing seasons. Occasionally the detail becomes ponderous, slowing down the narrative. More often, the depth of detail feels appropriate, mirroring the deliberate pace of Kate’s recovery and regeneration. Powning’s subject here is no less than the relationship of life and death, and she engages it with rigour and grace.