Publisher's Synopsis
Yes, we really did find an old diary on our new property. The house we bought was over 100 years old and a small green book was lost in the midst of business papers in a large box in a storage shed. All my life I always hoped I would inherit a diary written by my own ancestors, but finding this one was just as exciting! As I began to read the words written by a stranger, I was swept away into her life almost 100 years ago.
These are her words. These are her pictures. This is her life. Marion Iona Merrit was born in the tiny town of Farmington, which straddled the Washington and Idaho border in 1909. It was a second marriage for her father and he had 7 children from his first wife. It was also a second marriage for her mother and she had 8 children from her first husband. So this tiny tot came into the world with 15 brothers and sisters. Soon the family relocated to Spokane, Washington and this was where she lived during the time she wrote in her 5-year diary. At the beginning of the diary, Ione was 24 years old, living with one of her sisters and working as a public stenographer downtown. She met a boy on the streetcar--he was the driver--and fell in love with him. And then she met another boy while skating at the local rink. At the end of the diary, when she was 28, she married one of them. She went to movies and dances with friends, swam and spent weekends at many of the surrounding lakes and even met some very famous people along the way such as Mae West, Bob Hope, Billy Sunday, Babe Ruth, Jack Dempsey and Bing Crosby. It may seem like a very ordinary life, in a way, but it turned out to be a slice of history and several mysteries all rolled into one. Why did her mother move to the other side of Oregon and leave her behind? Why did she and her best friend, Mad, have a falling out? Where was the mysterious Mr. Powell going every weekend during the Prohibition? And why did she have to wait three years to marry the love of her life? So come along with me as we discover what life was really like during the Depression for a young, adventurous, modern young woman who lived her life to the fullest. Experience her heartaches, her joys and her triumphs in this true story told by a remarkable woman who called herself Ione.
