Heart of a Wife: The Diary of a Southern Jewish WomanIn 1995, NPR editor and producer Marcus D. Rosenbaum met his grandmother-fifty years after her death. Rosenbaum and his family were attending to the bittersweet business of cleaning out the family home after his father died when, in an old closet, in a ziplock bag, his niece discovered a gateway to the early part of the century and into the life of Helen Jacobus Apte, a Southern Jewish woman living in post-Victorian era Florida and Georgia. The covers of his grandmother's diary were cracked and the pages were beginning to yellow, but there it was: almost forty years of passion, doubt, love, and life, penned in unflinching candor. Heart of a Wife: The Diary of a Southern Jewish Woman is the collection of Helen Apte's own diary and essays by her grandson, Marcus D. Rosenbaum, who edited the volume. This book reflects Apte's unorthodox, complex, and independent spirit during a very conservative time. Her shockingly frank opinions are offered on sex, marriage, children, religion, and her native South. Crafted in the heartwarming yet heart-wrenching style of Angela's Ashes and A Midwife's Tale, Heart of a Wife allows the reader a unique glimpse at significant events that gripped the world during the first half of the twentieth century: the Great Depression, the World Wars, and the sinking of the Titanic are but a few. |
From inside the book
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... eyes are bright and I'm too fat . That's the joke of it— none of my clothes fit , and my figure looks too funny . I've finished my second 100 iron pills , and that and living more in the air is what has cured , or rather benefited me so ...
... eyes steely blue , his lips together , his head erect , making a stand against all odds , and I can hear him say , " I do this thing because it is right , because it is my duty , and I shall not fail . " And so I say my three brothers ...
... eyes with her own hazel eyes wide open , frank and candid eyes like her Daddy's . I dread the day to come when a girl will come between those honest eyes and my searching ones . She will have secrets from me , of course . Even now I ...
Contents
Hard Times among the flat Dwellers 19111913 | 43 |
Chapter3 At Home at War the Roaring Twentiesand Alice | 73 |
Photographs | 103 |
Copyright | |
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