The Correspondent

The Correspondent is Virginia Evans’s first fiction novel, published in April 2025. Longlisted for the Centre for Fiction First Novel Prize, it has also been named a PBS Top Summer Book and a LibraryReads Pick of the Month. In The Correspondent, Evans explores the life of septuagenarian Sybil Van Antwerp as she cultivates her longstanding letter-writing habit to address the loves, regrets, successes, and failings of her life.

This guide is based on the Crown Publishing Group (Penguin Random House LLC) e-book edition published in April 2025.

Content Warning: The source text and this guide feature depictions of substance use, mental illness, pregnancy loss, child death, illness, death, and death by suicide.

Plot Summary

Every week, Sybil Van Antwerp sits at her writing desk to send letters. The day after her 73rd birthday, she lies and assures her brother, her neighbor Theodore, and her best friend and former sister-in-law Rosalie that she only had a minor accident. Unbeknownst to her family, her vision is declining, and as she drove home one night, she totaled her car. Frightened her family might pressure her to commit to a retirement home, she keeps quiet about her situation and maintains her correspondence with friends, family, and authors. She feigns being fine with everyone but Gilbert—her deceased son, nicknamed Colt—to whom she writes unsent letters and confesses everything.

Weeks go by, and Sybil is shocked to learn that Guy Donnelly, her former partner and the circuit court judge she clerked for, has died. The press prints an article on Sybil and insinuates intimacy in their close relationship, to which Sybil takes offense. Though her career path was uncommon for a woman at the time, her work with Guy remained strictly professional. His wife asks her to speak at the funeral, which, while trepidatious, Sybil accepts. Though she receives a threatening letter about Guy’s death from a stranger named DM, Sybil attends the funeral with James Landy, a former protégé and colleague whose son, Harry, Sybil corresponds with regularly. She feels a closeness to Harry and is concerned about the bullying he endures. After the funeral, a former acquaintance by the name of Mick Watts writes to her, as he wishes to take her out to dinner, but Sybil refuses.

Sybil’s daughter, Fiona, is pregnant with her first child, and though Sybil is elated for her, she is certain that she will not know the child: Fiona lives in London and only visits once a year, while Sybil never travels. In her letters to Colt, she reflects on her own parents, her adoption, and how, as a child, she’d secretly hoped her birth mother was Mary Poppins and that she would come to claim her. Months later, Rosalie informs Sybil that Daan, her ex-husband and the father of her children, has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of cancer. In the face of looming death, Sybil’s children buy her a license for the Kindred Project, a DNA testing company that will allow her to know more of her origins. Because of her complicated feelings about adoption, Sybil is initially hurt by the gift and reluctant to use it. She likes Theodore’s gifts—notes, cookies, and roses.

As more threatening letters arrive from DM, Sybil grows fearful, but she is preoccupied by Mick’s persistent courtship, and despite her misgivings, he charms her. Months after receiving the Kindred Project license, Sybil calls their customer service line and meets Basam, a Syrian refugee who helps reassure her about the process. She decides to go through with the DNA testing. Harry Landy shows up at her house with his dog, as he has run away from home. He feels betrayed when she contacts his father and cuts off contact for months, even though Sybil continues to write to him regularly. When she receives her DNA results, she finds that her origins are half British, a quarter Crow, and a quarter Russian/Iberian, and she considers using the connection feature in the program to match with individuals with similar DNA.

On her 76th birthday, she receives a letter from Daan, their first communication since he returned to Belgium after their divorce. He confesses to his regrets about their marriage falling apart after Gilbert died and asks for her forgiveness. He hopes she will write back, and for months, Sybil attempts to find the words to express her feelings and the guilt she feels for her part in Gilbert’s death, how she’d ignored him and inadvertently encouraged him to jump off a boulder and into a lake where he would break his neck. Sybil is never able to respond, and Daan dies. When Sybil also fails to attend his funeral in Belgium, Fiona finds her behavior unforgivable and seeks out Rosalie, her godmother and aunt. Though Rosalie attempts to counsel Sybil to reconcile with Rosalie, Sybil feels betrayed and cuts off contact with her.

Meanwhile, Sybil has matched with someone at 49%. Though he loses his job over their interpersonal communications, Basam helps Sybil find out the person’s identity, Henrietta “Hattie” Gleason. Sybil helps Basam find a new job at an engineering firm. Harry finally responds to Sybil and informs her about his school life and how the bullying has intensified. He asks her for one last letter to tell him how her vision is and how her courtship with Mick is going. Sybil grows closer with Theodore after a run-in on the nature path by their houses that left her with an injured arm. Though her ophthalmologist claims she will soon lose her ability to drive, she insists on keeping her eyesight issues a secret from her family.

Harry attempts death by suicide, and Sybil agrees to have him remain with her as he recovers. He stays for a year and helps Sybil identify her stalker, DM, after he butchers her garden. She finds out DM is Dezi Martinelli, the son of Enzo Martinelli, a man whose lawsuit Sybil once allowed to be unfairly ruled. She confronts him through a series of letters, explaining her bitterness when he, his brother, and his mother begged for mercy for Enzo. During their correspondence, they share their common grief over deceased children and heal from the pain of their past.

Hattie finally answers Sybil’s letter. She and her three brothers are eager to know more about Sybil. Hopeful, they exchange letters and phone calls, and Hattie reveals what she knows about Sybil’s biological parents. When Mick proposes to Sybil, she must decide between him and Theodore. Ultimately, she chooses Theodore. Her eyesight becomes more troubled, and though writing grows difficult, she writes to Fiona after a fight. Sybil follows Rosalie’s advice and tells Fiona of the grief she endured when Gilbert died, how at odds she’s always felt with the world, and how terrified she was of being a bad mother to her. As they reconcile, Sybil uses the momentum to apologize to Rosalie and recount the true events of Gilbert’s death to Theodore. She also accepts Hattie’s invitation to visit Scotland and confesses her love to Theodore. As she begins to travel with him, she writes a final letter to Colt and plans to live out the rest of her days surrounded by her family and friends. She dies on what would have been his 57th birthday and leaves behind money for Dezi to help his family.