Christina Holbrook and Jane Flynn went to the same high school and college, and they both moved to New York City after graduation. Their paths diverged shortly after, but around 2017, Holbrook said they reconnected on Facebook.

Flynn lived in Greece at the time with her now-ex-husband, but she returned to New York City in 2020 — the same year her youngest son died by suicide. Holbrook, a Breckenridge resident, said she comforted Flynn from across the country until Holbrook received a brain tumor diagnosis in 2022 and the roles reversed.

Holbrook is an author — her 2022 novel “All the Flowers of the Mountain” won a Colorado Book Award for best romance fiction — and she said writing has helped her process things. She asked Flynn if she would like to write letters to each other.

“I just was in this terrible depression, and really just couldn’t do anything,” Holbrook said. “I proposed to her, what if, you know, I wrote you a letter? Would you write back to me?”

The pair started writing to each other, typing in word processors on their computers and emailing their correspondences as attachments. Holbrook said the first few letters were formal, but that changed over time. Each wrote about a walk they had taken in their first letters, she said.

“As we began this process, that formality started to give way to sharing some of the real grief that we were feeling, each of us in our own situations, and also trying to find ways to comfort the other person,” Holbrook said.

From November 2022 to January 2024, the friends wrote to each other. Holbrook said the project came to what felt like a “natural conclusion” after 14 months, as the pair had found “a certain measure of healing” in their lives.

“It was so important during that year,” Holbrook said. “It had a purpose of helping us each to come to a better place in our lives and a greater understanding, not only of the particular grief that we had, but also so many things about each of our lives that we were kind of exploring in these letters.”

Holbrook and Flynn thought others could benefit from reading the letters, as they showed how the friends had helped each other grow as people, develop their capacities to deal with terrible things, explore their lives together and find peace and acceptance. They decided to publish the letters in a book: “Antiphon: A Call and Response in a Year of Grief and Renewal.”

“Antiphon” comes from “antiphony,” which is a call-and-response style of singing. The book divides the letters into sections, starting with “Beginning the Conversation” and continuing with “Winter,” “Spring,” “Summer” and “Fall,” before concluding with “Turning of the Year.”

Holbrook said she and Flynn started to get nervous as the Oct. 15 release date approached, as the letters were “pretty revealing” and people reading them made them feel exposed. Early reviews online and messages from readers have eased their worry, though.

“We’ve come to both be really excited by how much it seems to be touching people in ways that we had not expected,” Holbrook said. “I would say it’s touching people in the sense of it’s fairly open and honest, and I think people can see themselves, too — some of their own struggles.”

The feelings and experiences Holbrook and Flynn wrote about may show people they are not alone in feeling or experiencing those things in their own lives, Holbrook said. She said the pair examined many things from their lives, not just the grief and pain that sparked the conversation.

“I wouldn’t say it’s really a book about illness or a book about death per se,” Holbrook said. “It’s more of a contemplative type of work where two people are considering their lives and the choices they’ve made and how they would like to spend the time that they have left, hopefully in a positive way.”

Next Page Books in Frisco will host Holbrook for a book launch event Sunday, Oct. 26, from 1-3 p.m. Holbrook will sign copies of “Antiphon” at the event.

Those who have experienced the loss of a loved one to suicide can find resources through the Alliance of Hope at AllianceOfHope.org or BuildingHopeSummit.org.