Dear Madame:
My name is Ethel and I am a recent widow. My novel is called "Ethel's Sacrifices" and it is a heartwarming tale of love and courage. I haven't finished it yet, but I think it will be about 200,000 words long when I'm done.
The story is about Ethel, a woman from Littleton, Ohio who works as a phone operator and has married the first man she kissed. Her humdrum life is turned upside down when her accountant husband Stanley is diagnosed with a lingering and terminal disease, and Ethel is forced to leave her job to become a full-time caregiver to Stanley, who secuumbs and dies after a brutal 20 month battle with this illness. The loss devestated Ethel both emotional and fiancially, and when she tries to return to work nobody will hire her, because she's old and she's gained a lot of weight and companies in Littleton don't consider caring for a dying husband to be real work.
This is a very important book, since it shows how my dear husband had suffered for all of these years and all of the sacrifices I had to make to care for him. Stanley and I never had any family or friends to help us. I've spent the past two decades washing and feeding and dressing him, and if you publish this story everyone will want to read it and that will give me life meaning. If you reject it I will know that you are rejecting me -- and my dead husband -- and I will know that none of my sacrifices ever mattered to anyone, so I will probably pin your rejection letter to my chest and go into the gargage and leave the engine running, and it won't matter because you don't care, and nobody cares, and I should have never been born since my life was a waste and I didn't have any fun anyway.
But I know you'll love it since it such a profound tale of true courage. Call me when you are ready to sign me.
Love,
Ethel
