Advance Praise for Three Guesses
2023 Fugere Book Prize Recipient
Available June 17, 2025
“Three strangers linked by chance through a mysterious painting forge an unlikely friendship in a years-long exchange of letters. Ghosts haunt this story—missing parents, palpable absences, destructive pasts that hover over the characters’ present lives. Identities are assumed, then shed; running away becomes running toward. In Three Guesses, Chris McClain Johnson has crafted a novella that is a song to the groundedness and salvation that human connection provides.” —Cynthia Reeves, author of The Last Whaler & Falling Through the New World
“Three Guesses is an absolute delight. As Sam, Richard, and Pete get to know each other through increasingly intimate letters, they open themselves up to the universe at large. Even with their faults and foibles, these characters are relatable, lovable, and so very human. My favorite quote from Three Guesses sums it up: “People are supposed to find out about each other from each other.” I’m still smiling about this uplifting novella, which reminds us so beautifully that surprising connections can ripen between people searching for friendship.” —Heather Bell Adams, author of Maranatha Road &The Good Luck Stone
“Chris Johnson’s Three Guesses is a gem. Allowing the reader into the lives of her characters through a series of letters, Johnson offers the reader a chance to participate in a communal sharing. Three lives celebrate, grieve, love and lose, vanish and reappear. They connect and open up to each other, and in the process share their lives with the lucky individual reading this literary treasure.” —David Tankersley, writer, publisher, producer, actor, artist, creative consultant
“In a day of instant communication and surface relationships, it is refreshing to read of a deep connection that evolves through old-fashioned ‘snail mail.’ Chris McClain Johnson weaves a gentle, slow-building ode to the transformative power of the written word in this lovely novella. She deftly draws readers into three distinct characters’ lives, and the result is a testament not only to the power of words, but also to the healing prospect of genuine, authentic friendship. I didn’t want it to end.” —Tracey D. Buchanan, author of Toward the Corner of Mercy and Peace
“Three Guesses is a fascinating look at modern friendship formed through old-fashioned snail mail correspondence. Taking place over almost a decade, the characters move from strangers to intimates, bonding over truths and falsehoods, sharing questions about creativity, relationship, loss, and finding oneself. Through short stories, poetry, obsessive lists of four-syllable words, and candid confessions, Johnson takes her characters on an insightful journey that defines relationship in our times.” —Judith Lindbergh, author of AKMARAL
“In Chris McClain Johnson’s wildly entertaining and smart epistolary novella, Three Guesses, an unpredictable friendship is forged between three unlikely characters. When they meet, each is like a “lost character” in a story or “missing comma” in a poem, yet through their honest exchanges, they not only find each other but themselves. Frequently lyrical and rife with poems and stories, this intimate and funny book is filled with longing and heart. One of the three characters writes: “We’re all falling all the time. Some of us are lucky enough to have someone or something to catch us before we hit the ground.” This at first hapless trio discovers they are not only willing, but able and eager to catch each other, and they not only catch but enthrall readers too. This book will move you. It will make you both plummet and rise with the love and hope strangers can and should bring to each other’s lives. Three Guesses, restores and reinforces faith in humanity.” —Deirdre Fagan, author of Find a Place for Me & Phantom Limbs
“What a lovely story! I feel as though I know each of the participants. The premise was unique, the story unfolded in a believable and very human way, and the ending was perfect.” —Willy Bearden, filmmaker, photographer, author, producer
Chris McClain Johnson’s Three Guesses is a big-hearted novella about three strangers who become pen pals over the chance sale of a piece of art. What begins as a lark - sending letters in the mail at the end of the twentieth century! - evolves into years of sharing loves and losses, transitions and triumphs, new homes and old ghosts. This is the story of the enduring nature of friendship, the gift of the written word, and most of all, the power of found family. Three Guesses is a delight!” —Miriam Gershow, author of Closer and Survival Tips: Stories
“Chris Johnson brings back the art of letter writing in her novella Three Guesses. I found myself totally involved with the characters as she brought them to life in each letter. Through these correspondences the characters develop and intrigue us even more. Over the years you come to know each person and relate to their joys and pains. There is a feeling of realness and sincerity as you follow their lives in each letter. Three Guesses reminds us friendship, and family, can be found in the most unusual ways.” —Jodie Vance, publisher of Memphis Downtowner magazine
Chris McClain Johnson’s beautiful novella, Three Guesses, immerses us in the lives of strangers linked by a painting (the Three Guesses of the title)—a young temp worker, the painting’s owner, and the artist. In the letters that comprise the book, the three characters are at first distant and awkward, but eventually they transcend issues surrounding the painting and reveal with depth and honesty the joys and sorrows, the loves and heartbreaks in their lives. In a time when letter writing has become virtually a lost art, something magical occurs within their long, letter-writing relationship, just as something magical occurs for us in the reading: Three Guesses is a tribute to the lasting value of the written word and to friendship. —Gerry Wilson, author of That Pinson Girl
“Chris Johnson’s epistolary novella, Three Guesses, begins with tentative communication among three strangers, centered on a work of art by one of the three. There is a testiness, and a desire for privacy, at the start. Soon the communicants form a bond…in the modern, virtual sense of the word. From its terse beginnings it becomes something else: a strange, moving, sometimes heartbreaking, sometimes exuberant narrative. That Johnson can get so much story out of three voices is the book’s small literary miracle. The prose is sparkling and moves as fast as the sweet lines of a pop song. This is a sly and witty commentary on contemporary friendship. It’s also a confident, joy-filled, compelling work of bookish entertainment.” —Corey Mesler, author of The World is Neither Stacked For Nor Against You: Selected Short Stories
“Epistolary, accessible, unpredictable, and, maybe most important, charmingly readable—one way or another, Chris McClain Johnson's Three Guesses will make its way into your heart.” —Mark Wish, author of the International Book Award winner Necessary Deeds
“Intensely clever and often laugh-out-loud funny, Three Guesses features a trio of lost souls who braid themselves together, bit by bit, during a rollicking seven-year `grownup pen pal adventure.’ Unfurled through a series of letters, Chris McClain Johnson’s novella explores the relentless human quest for love and belonging in heartbreaking, hilarious detail, enriched by razor-sharp, often achingly beautiful prose. A quirky, restless temporary worker, `SB,’ triggers a prolonged letter-writing volley by contacting two strangers—art buyer Richard and artist Pete—regarding a painting that gives this book its title. After a frosty start, the three disclose profound truths about their lives and the people they have loved and lost. As each new truth is revealed, an urgent question arises. Readers will keep flipping pages, ever faster, eager to learn the fate of Johnson’s irresistible trio.” —Ginger Pinholster, author of Snakes of St. Augustine
An epistolary celebration of creativity, art, and the written word, Three Guesses is an enchanting treat of a novella. I absolutely adored it. When a bored temp worker sends an illicit letter to both an artist and to a man who owns one of his paintings, these three very different people start a correspondence that develops into an unlikely friendship. Only communicating through the mail, this odd trio will come to sustain each other in the most unexpected ways. With vivid, poetic storytelling and warm humor, Chris McClain Johnson weaves their loneliness and longing into a life-affirming and joyful tapestry of connection. Warning, you might find happy tears rolling down your cheeks as you turn the last page. —Jennifer Oko, author of Gloss and Just Emilia