Publisher's Synopsis
It begins with Ted's father running off to pan for gold in the Alaskan Gold Rush. It follows his life after he heads back to New Jersey, marries Susanna and starts a family, losing everything in The Great Depression, rebuilding his life and raising his three children. Then there is Minnie Mathis and Fred Shropshire who raise five children in the country through these same bleak times. Mildred Ethel is the second child. When Ted is a high school student in Pleasantville, New Jersey, he leaves school and enrolls in the United States Navy at seventeen to help the World War II effort. Milly is training as a Cadet Nurse at England General Hospital in Atlantic City, New Jersey. Home on leave and visiting his mother in the hospital, Ted finds his mother anxious to fix her son up with the lovely woman who has been her nurse. The two meet and almost immediately fall in love and begin writing letters the next day. Milly treasures these letters and saves them up in a shoe box tied with pink ribbon. They develop a close relationship after only a few brief visits and continue writing letters as Ted is sent overseas. Meanwhile, the war ends, and the couple is anxious to be together again, though Ted is busy in the Marshall Islands cleaning up after the war, trying to earn enough points for discharge. The letters continue.When Ted is finally discharged, he comes home to give his love a ring and get married. But first, Ted and Milly need to get to know each other in real life. After a tumultuous year, they marry and begin a family together. This is the story of that family through good times and bad, and of the love that they hold for each other "'til the end of time".
