Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home

Stephen Grant’s memoir opens with a vivid sense of place and culture that immediately situates the narrative within the Blue Ridge Mountains of Appalachia, the region where he grew up and to which he returned during the pandemic. The setting is geographically significant and culturally rich, reflecting both natural beauty and the weight of personal history. This establishes the theme of Confronting the Past and Coming Home Again. 

However, the narrative is also set in 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, which renders strange what was once familiar. Grant describes the countryside and the nation itself as “alien and distant” during his deliveries, calling it “all bandit country” (2). This hyperbolic depiction of the pandemic-stricken landscape establishes both the literal and symbolic challenges he faces, situating his role as a mail carrier in a time of national crisis. The memoir’s conflict will take the form of both man versus world and man versus self: Grant struggles with the changes in his hometown, but these changes mirror his sense of personal alienation. At multiple points, he expresses spiritual disorientation, admitting he is “lost in the sense that [he] [doesn’t] know what [he’s] doing, lost in confronting the reality of being back in [his] hometown at fifty years of age, delivering the mail” (2). Isolated and navigating a career change, he experiences social and existential challenges. The liminal space he occupies during this period, which he dubs “Fuck City,” amplifies the tension between personal limitations, family responsibilities, and national crises.

Yet those very tensions and challenges are ultimately what would reconnect Grant to himself, his work, and his country. Grant’s writing uses a variety of rhetorical strategies, particularly hyperbole, to convey his personal transformation and the stakes of his work. He frequently elevates the seemingly mundane tasks of mail delivery into a profound act of service, emphasizing that he was “the goddamned mailman” (7); the cursing punctuates the job title, suggesting its importance and uniqueness. Indeed, Grant positions himself as a figure of importance, writing of his transformation into “a flag-wearing, sworn federal officer in a position of trust, the duly appointed agent of the United States government in a time of national crisis, the dedicated and beloved civil servant of the people” (7). The emphasis Grant lays on his duties suggests how the role expanded his perception of himself; as he puts it, his time delivering mail was “the deepest trip into the heart of the American experience that I have ever had the grace to take. It expanded my soul” (6). The combination of physical labor, civic responsibility, and reflective awareness allowed Grant to reconnect with the region, his family history, and the idea of coming home. This establishes a second important theme: The Transformative Power of Work.

The people and objects Grant describes encountering reinforce the memoir’s major ideas. Individuals like Jackie, a friend at training who survived traumatic experiences, mirror Grant’s own trauma connected to his father and the Virginia Tech shooting, creating parallels that emphasize resilience and the Appalachian grit that Grant admires. The symbolism of his 2001 Ford Explorer, his closest companion on the route, reflects stability, loyalty, and continuity, while the sword he delivered embodies hope and restoration, representing how the right object can “make a broken world whole again” (4). Grant also engages with Appalachian stereotypes, celebrating the region’s endurance and work ethic while simultaneously acknowledging his father’s authority to critique local cultural norms. In doing so, he demonstrates his own efforts to reconcile his identity with his cultural roots.