Stephen Starring Grant’s debut memoir Mailman: My Wild Ride Delivering the Mail in Appalachia and Finally Finding Home arrives like an unexpected package on your doorstep—unassuming at first glance, yet containing something far more valuable than anticipated. Grant, a former marketing executive turned rural mail carrier, delivers a narrative that feels both deeply personal and universally resonant, chronicling his year-long stint with the United States Postal Service in his hometown of Blacksburg, Virginia, during the tumultuous early days of the pandemic.
When Grant was laid off from his consulting gig in March 2020—just fifty years old and battling cancer—he faced the stark reality that confronts millions of Americans: the desperate need for health insurance. His solution? Becoming a Rural Carrier Associate with the USPS, a job that promised healthcare benefits from day one and thrust him back into the Blue Ridge Mountains where he’d grown up.
A Voice Both Familiar and Fresh
Grant’s narrative voice carries the unmistakable cadence of someone raised in Appalachia but educated elsewhere—a perspective that serves the memoir exceptionally well. His writing crackles with intelligence and self-deprecating humor, peppered with observations that feel both literary and authentically conversational. When describing his mail truck as having “sloppy, slippery linkage, the leaking power-steering fluid smelling like industrial aromatherapy,” Grant demonstrates his ability to find poetry in the mundane machinery of daily work.
The author’s background as a marketing strategist and MFA graduate from the Iowa Writers’ Workshop becomes evident in his careful construction of scenes and his knack for metaphor. Yet he never lets his literary credentials overshadow the blue-collar reality of his new profession. This balance between intellectual observation and working-class experience gives the memoir its particular strength.
The Heart of Rural America
What elevates Mailman beyond a simple career-change narrative is Stephen Starring Grant’s genuine affection for the people on his routes. His portraits of customers range from touching to hilarious, always maintaining their dignity even when describing their eccentricities. The French woman living in a Victorian house painted in Mardi Gras colors, isolated on a mountain but maintaining perfect gardens and classical music; the tough mountain grandmother who hands him eggs for his family with a blessing; the customer who builds an elaborate Christmas light display that requires its own power grid—these characters populate Grant’s world with authentic complexity.
Grant understands that in rural America, the mailman occupies a unique position of trust and necessity. During the pandemic especially, he became a lifeline for isolated residents, delivering not just packages and letters but human connection itself. His description of carrying everything from respirators to Lord of the Rings replica swords captures both the absurdity and essential service of modern mail delivery.
Wrestling with Identity and Place
The memoir’s strongest passages explore Grant’s evolving relationship with his Appalachian identity. Having left the mountains for corporate success, his return as a mail carrier forces him to confront questions about class, belonging, and what constitutes meaningful work. He writes: “If I learned anything in my year carrying the mail, it is that I am Appalachian. Not the bullshit Hollywood version of ramshackle trailers and rusted Chevys up on cinderblocks.”
This tension between insider and outsider perspective gives the book its emotional weight. Grant simultaneously celebrates and critiques his community, showing love for his neighbors while acknowledging their flaws and his own complicated feelings about returning home in diminished circumstances.
Structural Strengths and Minor Weaknesses
Grant organizes his memoir chronologically through his year of mail delivery, a structure that serves the material well. Each chapter focuses on different aspects of the job—from training and route learning to seasonal challenges and customer relationships. The progression feels natural, allowing readers to experience Grant’s growing competence and changing perspective alongside him.
However, the memoir occasionally suffers from Grant’s tendency toward digression. While his observations about American politics, postal history, and Appalachian culture are often insightful, they sometimes interrupt the narrative flow. A section about Napoleon’s postal innovations, while fascinating, feels tangential to the main story. Grant’s marketing background shows in these moments—he’s clearly done his research, perhaps too thoroughly.
The book also grapples with tonal inconsistencies. Grant moves between profound observations about American community and workplace humor, between literary flourishes and straightforward narrative. While this mirrors the complexity of real experience, it occasionally makes the memoir feel unfocused.
The Reality of Blue-Collar Work
One of the memoir’s greatest achievements is its honest portrayal of physical labor. Grant doesn’t romanticize mail delivery—he details the brutal heat of summer routes, the bone-deep cold of winter deliveries, the physical toll on his aging body, and the sometimes mind-numbing repetition of the work. His descriptions of eating gas station sandwiches and developing a Slim Jim habit ring true for anyone who’s worked demanding physical jobs.
Yet Grant also captures the genuine satisfactions of the work: the problem-solving required to navigate rural routes, the pride in completing difficult deliveries, and the sense of purpose that comes from serving his community. His portrayal avoids both sentimentality and cynicism, presenting mail delivery as work that can be simultaneously exhausting and rewarding.
A Pandemic Memoir with Lasting Relevance
Writing about the early pandemic period, Grant captures a specific moment in American history when many people were reevaluating their priorities and relationships to work. His story of leaving corporate marketing for manual labor resonates with broader cultural shifts toward valuing essential workers and questioning the meaning of professional success.
The memoir also serves as an unexpected love letter to the USPS, an institution under constant political and financial pressure. Grant’s insider perspective on postal operations, from the camaraderie among carriers to the challenges of package delivery, provides valuable insight into an often-overlooked government service.
Minor Critiques and Considerations
While Grant’s writing is generally strong, the memoir occasionally indulges in overwrought prose that feels forced. Phrases like “the holy fire that drives the world” and extended metaphors about mail as America’s “physical internet” sometimes read as trying too hard for profundity.
The book also suffers from some repetitive elements—Grant returns to certain themes and observations multiple times without adding new insight. His relationship with his father, while clearly important to his emotional journey, receives extensive treatment that sometimes feels disconnected from the main narrative about mail delivery.
Additionally, while Grant’s political observations are generally thoughtful, they occasionally veer toward partisan territory that may alienate some readers. His critique of various political figures and movements, while often insightful, sometimes feels tangential to his personal story.
The Broader Literary Context
Mailman by Stephen Starring Grant joins a growing body of memoirs about working-class experience and economic displacement, following works like Matthew Crawford’s Shop Class as Soulcraft and Sarah Smarsh’s Heartland. Grant’s contribution to this genre lies in his particular perspective as someone who moved between classes and regions, offering insights unavailable to writers who remained in one world or the other.
The memoir also functions as a form of place-based writing, joining the tradition of Appalachian literature that includes authors like bell hooks and Silas House. Grant’s portrayal of contemporary mountain life adds nuance to often-stereotyped regional narratives.
Final Assessment
Despite its minor flaws, Mailman by Stephen Starring Grant succeeds as both personal memoir and social commentary. Grant’s year of mail delivery becomes a lens through which to examine larger questions about work, community, and belonging in contemporary America. His honest portrayal of both struggles and satisfactions rings true, avoiding easy answers while finding genuine meaning in unexpected places.
The memoir’s greatest strength lies in Grant’s ability to find universal themes in highly specific experiences. His journey from corporate executive to rural mail carrier illuminates broader questions about finding purpose in midlife, the value of essential work, and the importance of community connection.
Mailman offers readers an engaging blend of humor, insight, and genuine emotion. Grant’s voice feels authentic throughout, whether describing the technical challenges of mail delivery or reflecting on his place in the world. While the book may not achieve the literary heights of the very best memoirs, it provides an honest, entertaining, and ultimately moving account of one man’s unexpected journey home.
Recommended Reading
Readers who appreciate Mailman by Stephen Starring Grant might enjoy:
Similar Memoirs of Work and Place:
- Educated by Tara Westover – Another memoir of leaving and returning to rural roots
- Hillbilly Elegy by J.D. Vance – Though more controversial, offers another perspective on Appalachian identity
- The Death and Life of the Great Lakes by Dan Egan – Environmental writing with similar attention to place and community
Books About Essential Work:
- Nickel and Dimed by Barbara Ehrenreich – Classic exploration of low-wage work in America
- The Working Poor by David K. Shipler – Examination of economic struggle and dignity in work
- Shop Class as Soulcraft by Matthew Crawford – Philosophical take on manual labor and meaning
Appalachian Literature:
- Heartland by Sarah Smarsh – Powerful memoir of rural poverty and resilience
- Something’s Rising by Silas House – Contemporary Appalachian voices and stories
- All Over but the Shoutin’ by Rick Bragg – Southern memoir with similar themes of family and place
Mailman by Stephen Starring Grant stands as a worthy addition to contemporary American memoir writing, offering readers an honest, humorous, and ultimately hopeful story about finding meaning in unexpected places and the enduring importance of showing up for your community, one delivery at a time.