Dear Everyone,

In 1963, twenty-two-year-old Martha McCaffray set sail for Florence, Italy, to study painting and live a year entirely for herself. In sixty letters home, she chronicled her days of art, travel, friendship, and freedom – a brief window when she chose passion over expectation. Within a year of her return, she was a wife, a mother, and a woman who, unbeknownst to her at the time, would set her paintbrush down for good.

Sixty years later, those letters are unearthed and entwined with a modern narrative of grief, ambition, and self-discovery through womanhood. What begins as a portrait of a young woman’s bold year abroad becomes something more – a mirror reflecting the timeless struggle between societal expectation and personal truth.

Dear Everyone, is a work of narrative nonfiction that braids Martha’s mid-century letters with a contemporary voice reckoning with the same questions: What does it mean to choose yourself? And what is lost when you don’t?

For readers of Everything I Know About Love by Dolly Alderton and The Middle Place by Kelly Corrigan, this is a story for every woman caught between who she is and who she’s expected to be.

Author Biography

Henley Carr is a writer, creative strategist, and new mother navigating the delicate balance between ambition and identity. After enduring a complicated family background and personal loss, she’s pursued stories rooted in healing, authenticity, and self-discovery.

Drawing on experience from speechwriting, film, journalism, and branding, Henley brings her debut project, Dear Everyone, to life. This narrative nonfiction weaves together sixty rediscovered letters from 1963 with Henley’s contemporary journey of grief, ambition, and the quest for authenticity.

When she’s not writing, you’ll find her dreaming up escapes to Palm Springs, flipping through Slim Aarons coffee-table books, and cherishing quiet moments with her husband, new baby, and golden retriever, Millie.