The Last Letter

Rebecca Yarros is an American novelist and New York Times bestselling author. Yarros mostly writes contemporary romance and romance fantasy; she is best known for the first two novels of her fantasy Empyrean series, Fourth Wing (2023) and Iron Flame (2023). Her other romance novels include In the Likely Event (2023) and The Things We Leave Unfinished (2021).

For The Last Letter, a standalone novel, Yarros draws on aspects of her own life to contextualize the story and draw out themes. Yarros is a military wife, and her husband has had deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan (Yarros, Rebecca. “About Me.” Rebecca Yarros). Yarros began writing her first book during her husband’s third deployment. Yarros’s personal experience with having a loved one in the military is reflected in The Last Letter: Ella, one of the protagonists, had a father and brother in the military. Beckett, the other protagonist and Ella’s eventual romantic partner, is also in the military.

The letters that kickstart Beckett and Ella’s relationship and form a recurrent motif and narrative device in the book are also inspired by Yarros’s own experiences. Yarros recalls how she and her husband wrote letters to each other during his multiple deployments. As the spouses’ only source of communication, these letters were essential to the health and strength of their marriage. She draws on her experience of pouring heartfelt emotion into each letter in crafting the ones between Ella and Beckett (Yarros, Rebecca. “Writing the Perfect Love Letter.” Fresh Fiction, 5 March 2019). Beckett eventually retires from the military following Ryan’s death; Yarros’s husband also eventually retired, and the couple has since embraced civilian life (“About Me”).

There are other aspects of Yarros’s life that make their way into character and plot details in the book. The Last Letter is set in Telluride, a town in Colorado. Ella and Ryan are both raised there, and Ella never leaves. Beckett, who is initially reluctant to settle down anywhere, eventually falls in love with life in Telluride and settles down there with Ella and the kids. The characters’ love for Colorado comes from Yarros’s own. While she has lived in different places across the United States, she asserts that her heart “is still in Colorado” (“About Me”). Similarly, Beckett’s unhappy childhood growing up in foster homes comes from personal experience, too: Yarros and her husband fostered their youngest child before adopting her (“About Me”).