The Yellow Mailbox - Delores Glass

There was irony in the tragedy that left the son of a retired fireman permanently disfigured in a tragic car fire. The inferno had left Kip Castleberry almost unrecognizable as a human being, much less the handsome twenty-seven-year-old he had been. Kip was plunged into the abyss of depression, and he fervently wished he had died in that fire. When learning the severity of Kip’s condition and how it would alter all of their lives forever, Kip’s mother abandoned both he and his father, Donald, who morphed into an embittered, pessimistic recluse. The nurses in the burn unit avoided Donald Castleberry whenever he showed up to visit his son because of his dark, sarcastic demeanor. The medical staff knew that this father and son would face a cruel world of rejection outside the hospital, a world that accepted and idolized only physical good looks and would be repelled by Kip’s grotesque appearance. What could two such embittered men as Don and Kip Castleberry have in common with two beautiful women who had never been exposed to such trauma, especially exposure to someone in Kip’s physical condition? Could two beautiful women be harboring unspeakable tragedies of their own, tragedies that altered their perception enough to see beyond the catastrophic consequences of that car fire? Pamela had endured the loneliness and grief of watching her husband of many years die from a relentless and aggressive cancer, leaving her to face the end of life childless and all alone. Susan was an idealistic and loyal young woman who had seen every dream of the wonderful future she had worked and sacrificed to secure crumble before her eyes as the result of heart-wrenching betrayal. The Yellow Mailbox is the story of how the lives of four people intersected after coming out from extreme trauma and how these people impacted each other in ways that they would never suspect. As the story unfolds, it encourages examination of personal values and exposes the fallacy of judging others superficially.