Home Front Girl: A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America

Home Front Girl: A Diary of Love, Literature, and Growing Up in Wartime America — page 5
Preface More than 70 years ago the United States entered World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7 1941 In this book one voice allows us to eavesdrop on what everyday Americans thought and felt about that conflict After my mother Joan Wehlen Morrison died in 2010 my two older brothers and I found hundreds of poems and journal entries she had composed starting from when she was nine years old in 1932 Not seen in seven decades this time capsule allows us to witness the life of a young American girl growing up in Chicago in the wake of the Depression with World War II nearing and later beginning Readers have an abiding interest in normal people’s lives during extraordinary times The great popularity of histori cal fiction period films and even lines of dolls that embody different eras attests to this fact The published diary of a real American girl living in the late 1930s and early 1940s how ever is unique As most of the participants who experienced World War II are aged or dead discovering a fresh voice from that period adds a new dynamic to a time that has long been closed to us Home Front Girl contains a large selection of Joan’s jour nal entries which are identified by date the years 1937 to xi