In 1918, a miner on the run from the military wrote a letter to his sweetheart. Two months later he was in jail. Like millions of others, his letter had been steamed open by a team of censors shrouded in secrecy. Using their confiscated mail as a starting point, Dead Letters reveals the remarkable stories of people caught in the web of wartime surveillance. Among them were a feisty German-born socialist, an affectionate Irish nationalist, a love-struck miner, an aspiring Maxim Gorky, and two mystical dairy farmers with a poetic bent. Military censorship within New Zealand meant that their letters were stopped, confiscated, and filed away, sealed and unread for over 100 years. Until now.