A Good American Family:The Red Scare and My Father by David Maraniss

Which of us has known his brother? Which of us has looked into his father's heart? Look Homeward, Angel, Thomas Wolfe

In the years between my father's retirement and his recovery of grief over the early loss of my mother, he bought an electric typewriter and wrote his memoirs.  Dad took his pages to the office supply store and printed and bound them to distribute among his family and friends. Dad was very proud to know people enjoyed reading about his childhood growing up during the Depression in a changing world, his father's time as a volunteer fireman and building a gas station, his adventures in scouting and camping along the Niagara River, meeting my mother, and running the family business after his father's death until our move to Detroit where he hoped to secure a job in the auto industry.

I shared these memories on my blog and on Facebook, attracting lots of readers from our hometown. But there was much missing between these stories. He wrote little about his marriage and us kids. And stories that he told me that were more personal, or that Mom had shared, were left out.

We show the world who we hope we are, hiding the deepest pain and loss and hurt. The conflicted feelings of guilt and embarrassment of bad choices, the pain we wrecked on others, we leave buried in our own hearts. We carry these things alone. Which of us has truly known our father, or mother, or sibling, or spouse?

"The more I read the letters, the more I thought to myself: Why did he write them like a journal...if not for me to find them and give him a voice again, to show the determination, romanticism, and patriotism of a man who once was called un-American?" from A Good American Family by David Maraniss

David Maraniss had written about other people's stories, from Vince Lombardi and Clemente to Bill Clinton and Al Gore. He decided it was time to look into his own father's life. He had "desensitized" himself to what his father Elliott Maraniss had endured "during those years when he was in the crucible, living through what must have been the most tyring and transformative experience of his life."

In 1952, Elliot Maraniss was brought in front of the House Committee on Un-American Activities in Detroit, Michigan.

He was a newspaperman, a graduate of the University of Michigan where he had worked on the Daily newspaper and found kindred spirits dedicated to progressive values. Elliott married into a family committed to the perceived virtues of communism. He enlisted to serve in WWII right after Pearl Harbor. But the government was tracking communists, and although an exemplary officer, he was deemed untrustworthy. Instead of seeing action, Elliot was relegated to the Quartermaster Corps, and because of his passion for racial justice and equality, put in charge of a segregated African American unit. He put all his energy into growing the men into a stellar unit. He held an American optimism that people can overcome the obstacles of "race and class, education and geography and bias."

In the 1930s, communism seemed to be society's best hope for equality and justice, attracting people of progressive ideas. The attraction waned as Stalin took over Russia. Maraniss shares the stories of men whose high ideals brought them to the Communist Party. Some of his U of M friends went to fight in the Spanish Civil War, which was against American law.

"There are aspects of his thinking during that period that I can't reconcile, and will never reconcile, as hard as I try to figure them out and as much of a trail as he left for me through his writings." from A Good American Family by David Maraniss

A Good American Family is the story of his father and his generation of progressive idealists during the Red Scare. Maraniss plumbed the records to understand his father and reconcile the man he knew with the man who stood in front of the House Un-American Committee--was he a revolutionary or on "the liberal side of the popular front?"

Maraniss draws on his father's letters and newspaper articles and obtained access to government files. He tells the stories of the men behind the hearings and the grandmother who was paid to infiltrated the Michigan Communist Party and gather names. The overarching narrative is the story of how the Red scare was born and grew in power. The House Committee hearings were not legal court procedures and those on the stand did not have the protections offered in court hearings.

What is a 'good American family'? Can we hold and voice personal convictions that some deem threatening and still be considered good citizens? The book is a personal history and a record of the abuse of unbridled power unleashed by fear.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

A Good American Family
by David Maraniss
Simon & Schuster
Publication Date: May 2019
$28 hardcover
ISBN13: 9781501178375

Read about Maraniss's previous book Once in a Great City at

https://theliteratequilter.blogspot.com/2015/09/once-in-great-city-detroit-story-by.html

The Welsh Fasting Girl by Varley O'Connor

While reading the first section of The Welsh Fasting Girl I thought it was all too familiar, too similar to another book I had read about a historical fasting girl. A young girl reportedly has stopped eating but is alive and well, her community hoping it is a miracle for in the mid-1800s faith is being challenged by science. The parents agree to a watch to ascertain the girl is not obtaining nourishment. A woman from outside of the community, an American journalist, comes to Wales to cover the story but becomes emotionally involved.

But halfway through the book, Varley O'Connor went in a completely different direction from the book I had previously read. Whereas the other book offered a wish-fulfillment ending, O'Connor's fasting girl does not survive. And this allows the novel to go into deeper territory, probing culpability and guilt in the family, community, culture, and laws of the time.

How could people not save the life of a starving girl? The doctors and nurses, the vicar, the parents, the sibling, all stood by, trapped by their own dark dreams and secrets as Sarah wasted away over fourteen days.

And what would drive a beautiful girl to embrace death?

Hysterical anorexia was identified as a specific disease in 1873, a few years after the death of the Welsh fasting girl. O'Connor notes that although records do not show that Sarah was sexually abused, a high incident of girls who fasted were in fact victims of sexual abuse.

The fictional American reporter, Christine, is a central character. As she writes letters to her reporter husband who never returned from covering the Civil War, we understand her perception of the people and events playing out. Her children grown, her beloved husband gone, she struggles with questions of identity and role in the world. She is young enough to miss love and old enough to have a life separate from her children.

After the trial to determine culpability in Sarah's death, Christine pursues further knowledge, several clues indicating that there was more to the story. And as she digs deeper, a complicated family web is unraveled.

O'Connor's tragic novel is beautifully written, her deep research contributing to a vivid sense of place and time. And although a work of historical fiction addressing the conflicts of the 1860s, the issues are relevant today.

I received an ARC from the publisher through LibraryThing. My review is fair and unbiased.

Hear an interview with Varley O'Connor on Biblio Radio here.

Read about the case at the Welsh Historical Society here.

The Welsh Fasting Girl
Varley O'Connor
Bellevue Literary Press
Publication May 7, 2019
$16.99 paperback
ISBN: 978-1-942658-62-7
ebook ISBN: 978-1-942658-63-4

Helen Korngold Diary: May 5-11, 1919

This year I am sharing the 1919 diary of Helen Korngold. Helen was a student at Washington University in St. Louis, preparing for a career in teaching. I researched Helen and the people, places, and events mentioned in the diary.

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

Monday 5
Practiced with Selma Levinson – School. May Day practice. Home – Practice – study.

Tuesday 6
School – practiced with Selma – Home –

Wednesday 7
Practiced – School. Played for Wednesday Musicale. It was real exciting. Wrote to Summer.

Thursday 8
School – not much excitement – home – received news of my election to Wednesday Musicale. Quite pleased. Sophie Stampfer – Mary Stillman – Harry Vogel & Dan Wolf coming over. Membership meeting. Bed at 12 bells.

Friday 9
Spent all day reviewing 138 for regiment – Harry Goodman came here. Glee Club concert in the evening with Pauline & Arthur Sarason & Karol. Had a good time.

Saturday 10
School. Dreadful exam in Hist. Pauline Carps, Grandma’s & home. Practiced & then took bath & to bed.

Sunday 11
Sunday School – Study – Satellites with Nat Aaronberg. Good time.


NOTES:

May 5

A Selma Levinson appears in the 1917 St. Louis City Directory living on Waterman St. She was a student.

May Day is a traditional and ancient springtime rebirth celebration dating to the Druids and adopted by the Romans.

May 7

The Wednesday Musicale was perhaps part of the Wednesday Club, which was founded in 1890 for civic improvement and for continuing education and advancement of the arts for women.

May 8

Mary Stillman on the 1910 St. Louis Census was 12 years old and living with her father Isaac (age 42, Yiddish, immigrated in 1884), mother Nettie (16), and siblings Maynard (14) and Edmund (10). Isaac was a merchant of gent’s furnishings according to the census and the St. Louis City Directories.

The 1920 Census shows Mary, age 23, living at home. Mary was not employed. According to his death certificate, Isaac died on March 10, 1936, of a burst appendix. Nettie (born Oct. 31,1874) died on July 25,1957, of heart disease according to her death certificate. They are buried at Beth Hamedrosh Hagodel Cemetery in Clayton, MO.

A December 22, 1929 story in the Jefferson City Post-Tribune reads, “St. Louis, Dec. 21—When the bandit appeared, he shouted, “Oh look at all the policemen at the door.” That is what Isaac Stillman, clothier, did here yesterday and the robber fled.”

Harry Vogel: There are several persons who this could be.

May 9 (University holiday)

Harry Goodman could be a number of persons in St. Louis, such as the 22-year-old son of Russian immigrant Simon, age 70, and Pauline, age 64 who appear on the 1920 St. Louis Census. On the 1916 St. Louis City Directory a Harry Goodman is listed as in ‘pants’.

Glee Club was an organization of Washington University.

St Louis Dispatch Article, May 11, 1919

Pauline Francis Sarason was in Helen’s Senior Class. She appears in the 1917 Washington University yearbook Hatchet on the Varsity basketball team. She received Final Honors in her graduating class in 1919. Final honors were awarded on the basis of having taken twenty half upper-level courses in the Junior and Senior years.

May 11

Nat Aaronberg may be Nathan Aronburg, the youngest of seven children to Max and Anna Aronburg. Max was a Polish/Russian immigrant born in 1848 who was a merchant on the 1900 St. Louis Census. On the 1920 Census, Nat and his mother Anna are living alone together and Nat was a clerk in a jewelry store. On the 1930 Census Nathan and Sadie Aronburg appear; Nathan is a sales manager in a jewelry store.

Ads from the Sunday, May 11 St. Louis-Post Dispatch:

Historical Fiction as Story, Interpretation, and Illumination

I read three historical fiction books at once, each about 400 pages long. They were very different not just in subject matter but in how they presented history.

Historical fiction can recreate history through story. It can reinterpret history through an author's viewpoint. And it can illuminate history for deeper, timeless messages. To me, each book represented one of these uses.

Recreating History Through Story: Lost Roses by Martha Hall Kelly

Lost Roses by Martha Hall Kelly is the prequel to her first novel The Lilac Girls. The Lilac Girls tells the story of Polish girls sent to Ravensbruck where the Nazis perform disfiguring operations on their legs. After the war, American socialite Caroline Ferriday takes up their cause and brings them to New York City for corrective surgery.

In her new book, Kelly turns her attention to Caroline's mother Eliza who was friends with Russian aristocrats, cousins of the Romanovs. Like others of their class, they lead a decadent and luxurious life. Kelly draws the daughters and their father to be sympathetic, their stepmother less so. With the toppling of the Tsar and the uprising against the aristocrats, the family finds themselves at the mercy of the Reds. The brutality of the Reds is depicted through two former prisoners who hold the family hostage.

Any 'White Russians' who could fled Russia. Meeting these refugee women, Eliza had compassion and organized to find them homes and employment.

The focus is on the aristocratic Sofya's search for her son who was both rescued and separated from her during the uprising. The boy was in the care of a peasant girl, Varinka, who disappears with him. It allows us to see two sides of the revolution while engaging our sympathy.

The novel was the May Barnes and Noble Book Club Choice. At our local group, several readers were swept into the story. Others wished there was a better grounding in the historical background of the Russian Revolution. It was agreed that family trees would have helped them.

Kelly fell in love with the Ferriday family while researching her first book. She is writing a second prequel about the family set during the Civil War. This book adds to the Ferriday family's history.

The novel is the May Barnes and Noble Book Club selection. I purchased a copy.

Reinterpreting History: Courting Mr. Lincoln by Louis Bayard

At the same time, I was reading Courting Mr. Lincoln, which the publisher offered me. Louis Bayard's novel is about the pre-marriage relationship between Abraham Lincoln and Mary Todd and Lincoln and his friend and roommate Joshua Speed. The novel is based on the myth created by gay activist Larry Kramer that Speed and Lincoln had a sexual relationship. Kramer claimed to have evidence but he never made it public.

I have read several books on Mary Todd Lincoln and had my own idea of her personality.

The novel begins when Mary arrives in Springfield to her sister's home to find a husband. The frontier town of 1,500 is described as primitive. I had read that Mary was well pursued and admired as a girl, but Bayard gives us a woman tipping into spinsterhood, surrounded by inferior suitors--except for Joshua Speed, who is dapper and handsome but standoffish with the ladies. Mary is at times audacious and has an unwomanly interest in politics.

Speed introduces Lincoln to Mary. Lincoln is stereotyped as a country bumpkin who must be educated to fit into society, a job Speed takes on. Bayard does not really convince me why Mary becomes attached to Lincoln. His character is the least developed. I had read that Mary strongly believed in Lincoln's political future. The book includes their falling out and coming back together leaving the lovelorn Speed to marry a woman who is happy to avoid the physical obligations of marriage.

I ended up speed reading through half the book. I do hope readers understand this is fiction! The portrait of Mary may surprise some readers who only know the yellow journalism view of her later life, the mad widow reduced to selling her clothing and sent to the asylum by her only surviving child. In the end, I see this as Joshua Speed's story, assuming he was in love with Lincoln.

I received a free ebook from the publisher through NetGalley. My review is fair and unbiased.

Courting Mr. Lincoln
by Louis Bayard
Algonquin Books
Pub Date 23 Apr 2019
ISBN 9781616208479
PRICE $27.95 (USD)

Historical Fiction as Illuminating: The Guest Book by Sarah Blake

The third novel I was reading at the same time was an ARC sent to me by the publisher, The Guest Book by Sarah Blake. It caught my interest early with beautiful, descriptive language and interesting characters. It is about the culpability of silence and the Milton family secrets, how wealth and privilege control the gates of power, and the acceptance of prejudice, racism, and anti-Semitism.

It is a family drama covering three generations of a wealthy, white family of privilege with deep American roots. There was a Milton in the first class at Harvard. They built a banking empire and thrived even during the Depression.

The first chapter is set in 1935 when young wife Kitty is filled with the joy of spring and ends with a horrible tragedy. I was hooked and compelled to read on.

The Guest Book recalled to mind E. M. Forster's Howard's End, one of my favorite novels. Forster's novel set in Edwardian England considers class and inheritance. Blake's novel considers prejudice and inheritance. Some characters can not give up their protected status of privilege and some rankle against it, hoping for a more just and equitable system.

In 1939, at the height of the Depression, Ogden Milton purchased an island retreat in Maine. Ogden hopes to begin anew with his wife Kitty after a tragic accident shattered their world. The island becomes part of their lives, representing all that is good and beautiful. It also holds them to the past, a place that resists change, from the upholstery and wallpaper to the ghosts that haunt it.

Milton's banking concern survived the Depression and continued to thrive during the war--partly because of German investments in steel which lead to business with the Nazis. When the steel magnate's daughter, who married a Jewish musician, asks Kitty to keep her child, Kitty turns her down. They return to Germany and are never heard of again. It is a guilty secret she keeps for decades.

Kitty and Ogden have daughters Joan and Evie and son Moss.

Evie behaves correctly, going to college and marrying the 'right kind' of man.

Joan has epilepsy and believes she will never marry. Then she meets Len Levy, a self-made man hired by her father's bank. He is a man of vision but his idea of opening the stock market to the middle and working class is rejected. Len is Jewish and people like the Miltons stick to their own kind. They keep their affair secret.

Moss is to inherit his father's position but chaffs under the expectations and prejudices of their aristocratic social class. He dreams of writing music for a new America and the changes he hears humming just out of reach.

On a fatal night in 1959, the family gathered on the island for Evie's wedding, two outsiders arrive at Moss's invitation. Len Levy and his Chicago childhood friend, Reg Pauling, an African American writer. Although they went to Harvard with Moss, these men know there are walls and gates that shut them out. In spite of Moss's vision of a new America of inclusivity--in spite of the passionate love between Len and Joan--they understand they are outsiders. The Miltons can be benevolent but they stick to the standards of the past.

What happens on that fateful day is kept secret. It is only known as the day Moss died.

After the passing of their grandparents and parents, Joan and Evie's children and their cousins must decide what to do with the Milton island home. Joan's daughter Evie can't bear to let go of the place, vivid memories mooring her to the island. But the family has run out of inherited money and the grandchildren have chosen idealistic careers that don't come with a large income. Evie's husband Paul, who is Jewish, can't understand her need to hang on to the island.

Evie is tormented by questions. Why did her mother Joan ask that her ashes be scattered on the rocky beach on the island? What was the story behind the photograph of their grandfather Ogden with a Nazi? How did Uncle Moss die? Why did her grandmother Kitty want the stranger Reg Pauling to get Moss's inheritance? Clues impel Evie to detangle the past until the family secrets are finally revealed.

In Howard's End, Forster asks who is to inherit Britain. In The Guest Book, the question of who is to inherit the island is at stake. The island becomes a symbol of the monied, white elite's world of privilege. Can they keep it?

I received an ARC from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Guest Book
by Sarah Blake
Flatiron Books
On Sale: 05/07/2019
$27.99 hardcover
ISBN: 9781250110251

The Road to Grantchester by James Runcie

I love the PBS series Grantchester. The main character, Sidney Chambers, is portrayed as a flawed man struggling with his faith and vocation. His becoming a priest has alienated him from his worldly friends who don't understand his choice. He must cope with the strictures of the organized church. He understands human frailty in others.

I have wanted to read the novels by James Runcie, and even bought the first book in the series but reviewing new books keeps me busy and it has languished in the TBR pile. 

But now I am not sorry because I can start at the very beginning with Runcie's newest novel in the series, a prequel titled The Road to Grantchester. 

How did the attractive, intelligent, lover of jazz end up in the priesthood? This novel shows us the events and internal anguish that brought Sidney to change his life.

The first section of the novel begins with Sidney and his London friends enjoying theater and fancy dinners and dancing. A quick jump five years later finds Sidney on a transport ship to Salerno. He is with his best friend from university, Robert Kendall, and Freddie Hawthorne, a theatrical star. These bright young men are thrown into bloody battle, Sidney set to being a sniper. They experience the destruction and misery of war.

The Episcopal priest Rev Nev is with the soldiers. "What does a priest do in the midst of this?" a friend asks him."I believe there is no higher calling than to be a priest in the service of God and God's people; to offer some kind of stability in a bewildered world," he explains. The soldiers are more than bewildered for the evil of war feels overwhelming and faith in a loving God flees. The men contend daily with mud and cold, seeing their comrades shattered and dying, and they long for the simple pleasures of clean dry clothes and a hot bath. And they wonder what it is like to have no enemy. The pleasant days of dancing with Amanda Kendall is a distant memory.

They arrive at the Gustav Line, a flooded valley without cover which they must cross. Then they must climb Monte Cassino with enemy fire raining down from the monastery at the top where the Nazis have buried in. During the battle, Robert Kendall dies, leaving a heartbroken Sidney with survivor's guilt and questions of culpability.

It is Rev Nev who helps Sidney, explaining the mystery of faith in a broken world. At war's end, Sidney realizes it is grace that he needs. His friends note the change in him. Oh dear, Freddie exclaims, either you've had too much to drink or you really have got religion.

I know about these battlefield faith experiences from my friend Floyd Erickson, a WWII veteran who was in the 10th Mountain Division. They were in Italy and had to climb Monte Belvedere at night. While advancing across the Po Valley in the foothills of the Apennines, his best friend was killed in a blast that left Floyd permanently deaf in one ear. While under fire, Floyd prayed to God for protection, offering a lifetime of service if he survived. Floyd made it home and changed his life. I knew him as a revered family man and leader in the local church. (Read more here.)

Part Two follows Sidney back home to England to face Robert's grieving family. Amanda can't reconcile a loving God with her brother's death. Sidney's family has expectations for his post-war career. Sidney lives with Robert's ghost and can't move on with his life. 

While Amanda and Sid's other friends only want to forget the war and have fun, Sidney finds that kind of life deadly and meaningless. He longs for a life with purpose. It's more than depression that ails Sidney--he is searching for peace and purpose. He continues to turn to Rev Nev for spiritual guidance. 

"I need to change my life," Sidney explains to Amanda. And in Part Three, Sidney explores his faith and a vocation as a priest.

There is a lot of God talk and faith talk in the novel. It is after all about Sidney's journey to the priesthood. I discovered that Runcie's father was Archbishop of Canterbury which explains the depth and realism of Sidney's journey. The rejection suffered from friends is also realistic. Amanda is unable to accept Sidney's choice and accepts the proposal from another man. I love that Freddie, who is gay, is the one friend who seems to 'get' Sidney and supports his decision.

Several episodes show Sidney's ability to understand people and know how best to counsel them and illustrate his native ability to notice what others don't see, both traits important to his ability to solve puzzles and crimes.

My favorite scene is Sidney's ordination which takes place in the ruins of Coventry Cathedral. A charred cross "symbolizes determination, survival, and above all, the possibility of Resurrection." He is presented with a cross made of nails gleaned from the ruined cathedral. 

The symbolism is vivid. Britain has suffered greatly, the world is broken. In taking orders, Sidney dedicates his life to the rebuilding of faith and hope in a devastated people. From these ruins, he is to raise up God's love to light the path forward. Sidney is trying to heal himself. He trusts he will also become a vehicle of healing to his flock.

I was impressed with Runcie's ability to show Sidney's path to his vocation, from the hard to read horror of war to the emptiness of frivolous pleasure, the questionings and embracing the mystery, and the bafflement of old friends who stereotype the priesthood. 

I received a free ebook from the publisher in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

The Road to Grantchester

by James Runcie

Bloomsbury USA

Pub Date 07 May 2019  

ISBN 9781635570588

PRICE $28.00 (USD) hardbound

Jane Austen Classics From Baker Street Readers for Young Readers

I just discovered the Baker Street Readers, retellings of classic books for ages 9 to 11 (Grades 4 to 6). I would have loved these books as a girl and wish I had them when I was raising my young reader!

The Classics Illustrated Comic Books were my introduction to the great books and motivated me to read them during my teen years. I found a cheap set of paperback abridgments that motivated my son to read the classics. I understand the importance of making children familiar with the great books.

This series not only presents the stories but also offers loads of aids beginning with a character page. 

Sense and Sensibility Character Page

'Looking Closer' provides more details from the original book, a paragraph explaining the cultural background of the time period, and suggested further reading, websites, and films.

Last of all, 'Food for Thought' presents starting points for discussion and discusses the book's themes and style.

There are 18 books in the series so far. I received access to two Jane Austen books. Both cloth books are 64 pages long.

Sense and Sensibility

from the publisher:
Marianne seeks a man who shares her eager spirit; Elinor is in love with the polite, considerate Edward Ferrars.

Their younger sister Margaret watches in bewilderment as Marianne and Elinor experience the joys and heartaches of early adult life.

Is Marianne too warm or is Elinor too cold? Whose example should Margaret follow? Margaret records the dangers presented by scheming friends and deceitful lovers.

Will Elinor's sense be strong enough to support both sisters, or will Marianne's sensibility bring tragedy?

What will you learn as you read Margaret's account?

Jane Austen's Sense and Sensibility
Publication Date: May 1, 2019
ISBN 9781912464128, 1912464128
Hardcover $11.99 USD, £6.99 GBP

 Jane Austen's Persuasion

Persuasion Character Page

from the publisher:
Eight years ago, Anne Elliot was persuaded that her family's honour was more important than her own happiness. She has suffered ever since. Now the man she turned away has returned. Can Captain Wentworth forgive Anne, or will he be charmed instead by the beautiful Louisa? Will Anne be persuaded to marry her cousin, or will she find the strength to follow her heart? The extravagance of Anne's foolish father, the greedy plotting of false friends, and a near-fatal accident bring danger into Anne's safe world. Their hearts assailed by resentment, regrets and rivals, can Anne and Captain Wentworth now reach across the void that separates them to love each other again?

Persuasion
Publication May 1, 2019
ISBN 9781912464142, 1912464144
Hardcover $11.99 USD, £6.99 GBP

Some of the other titles make me very excited! Austen's Emma and Pride and Prejudice are also included. And Charles Dickens' A Christmas Carol, Oliver Twist, and Great Expectations.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald is one American title included. That I have to see!

Boys will love All Quiet on the Western Front by Erich Maria Remarque. 

Sci-fi classics include The War of the World and The Time Machine by H. G. Wells (my son's favorite abridged stories as a boy) and Jules Verne's Around the World in Eighty Days.  

Horror classics Frankenstein by Mary Shelly and Bram Stoker's Dracula will chill some little readers! 

Shakespeare is represented with Romeo and Juliet, Macbeth, and The Tempest. 

My favorite Classics Illustrated Comic was Les Miserables, and yes, it is included in this series! It was one of the first classic novels I tried to read. And I have read and read it for over fifty years.

Teachers and parents can introduce children to the basic tale and build knowledge and understanding with these volumes.

I received egalleys from the publisher through Edelweiss in exchange for a fair and unbiased review.

Helen Korngold Diary: April 27 - May 4, 1919

This year I am sharing the 1919 diary of Helen Korngold of St. Louis, MO.

Helen Korngold, December 1919, New York City

Tuesday 29
School – not much doing. Home. Study History.

Wednesday 30
School – Baseball – our team lost to Sophs – 26-20! I’m all in.

May
Thursday 1
School – Home – Ida Goodman is here! Drove over to see her. She’s darling. Home – wrote Shakespeare theme. Went over to Jeanette Gate’s at 10 p.m. had a nice time. Home at 12:45

Friday 2
Up at 6 a.m. Finished Shakespeare theme. Danced in Field Trust. Awfully tired. Ida came to dinner & we talked until 12 a.m.  Then we went to bed.

Saturday 3
To school with Karol in machine. Collected a dime from Dr. McCourt for being late. Awful history exam. Junior Council Meeting. Pauline’s – she had a few girls over. Union Dinner in the evening. I’m certainly tired.

Sunday 4
Cleaned up & helped prepare for the girls who came over in the evening afternoon. We had a nice time. Aunt B[Beryl]. in the evening.

Notes:

May 1

An Ida Goodman shows up on the 1915 Kansas Census living in Valley Brook with her family H. Goodman, Maggie, H.C. and Grace. Other Ida Goodmans in California and Texas also appear in the census records.

Jeanette Gates (1899 to 1971) was Morris Gate’s sister.  In the 1917 City Directory she was a clerk and on the 1920 St. Louis Census she was a stenographer. She married in 1943.

May 3

The 'machine' is their automobile.

The Washington Union Dinner.

The Sunday, April 27 St. Louis Post-Dispatch included this ad for an event on the following Tuesday: