Estella's Diary: Bachelors and Beaus, Alas, Will True Love Elude Me? (Volume III)

By Gwen Pierce-Jones

It’s the first day of November in 1915. Volume III, Estella’s Diary: Bachelors and Beaus, Alas, Will True Love Elude Me? begins on a cool November morning. Estella is standing at the edge of a corn field at the crack of dawn, waiting for Freddy, the farmhand to give two giant Belgian horses the signal to slowly walk to the other end of the field. It’s corn husking time and everyone must help with the harvest. More than once Estella wonders why on earth she quit her job.
Using Estella’s authentic diary entries, family stories, and actual historical events, each chapter covers a single day in Estella’s life.
In Volume I of Estella’s story she enjoyed a summer of church picnics, carefree dates, and a glorious vacation with eight young women at a lakeside cottage. At the end of Volume I, Estella decides she must get a job.
In Volume II, she manages to get a job at a local manufacturing company. After five weeks on the job she is asked to work on an oil machine. She gets into an argument with the foreman and decides to quit her job. Much to her surprise her parents are not displeased with her decision. After all, it’s time to pick potatoes.
She has finally convinced her father’s cousin, Walter, they are “just friends” and he comes to the farm less and less these days.
Her Halloween party on October 30th is a turning point in Estella’s life. Grover Roth, who is no longer going out with Gladys Schaeffer, came to the party alone. He paid a lot of attention to Estella and she found him “quite chummy” the last hour of the evening.
Grover works in Philadelphia and only comes home on weekends. Perhaps he will ask her for a date next weekend.
Volume III, Estella’s Diary: Bachelors and Beaus, Alas, Will True Love Elude Me? covers November and December. The important women’s right to vote is on the Pennsylvania ballot, Estella is going out with a new beau, Grover Roth, while another beau, David Springer, keeps asking her to go horseback riding every Sunday, and the Harwi family is looking forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas.
You’ll meet the Harwi family as they begin a busy day around the kitchen table. It’s corn husking time and Robert, Estella’s father is anxious to get to work. Hattie, Estella’s mother just wants to make sure everyone is fed before they disappear for the day. Estella, is trying to explain to her father why it would be better if she stayed inside and helped her mother instead of working in the corn field. The youngsters, Ethel, Minnie and Robby are getting ready for the half-mile walk to school. Estella’s oldest sister, Pluma and her husband, Ollie are not visiting today. Ollie, an engineer, is away on a job for The Bethlehem Steel and Pluma is probably still in bed happy that she no longer has to help husk corn.
The three volume set of Estella’s Diary takes you on a journey through the end of the “Golden Years” of the early 1900’s. Capturing this transformative period through the richly drawn characters, you’ll come to know and care deeply for Estella, her family and her friends. Reading Estella’s actual diary entries will take you back to a time when women were fighting for the right to vote, families sat around the dining room table every Sunday, and everyone was glad that awful war in Europe was an ocean away.
The author, Gwen Pierce-Jones, is Estella’s niece. She found Estella’s Diary, wrapped in an old silk handkerchief, in a bedroom dresser drawer as she was cleaning Estella’s home after the family moved her from Coral Gables, Florida to a nursing home in “Good Old Bethlehem.” Estella passed away at the age of ninety-four in 1987.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Gwen Pierce-Jones
• Release date: Dec 30, 2015
• ISBN: 9781311178732

Gwen Pierce-Jones

A retired advertising executive, Gwen has been writing children’s stories for many years. Several of her stories, including The Trouble with George, An Oak Tree for Jesse, and Robert, the Boy with an Idea have been published in children’s magazines. When she found Estella’s Diary, she loved reading about her aunt’s adventures in 1915 and knew she had to share Estella’s interesting world with fellow readers. During her working years she managed the copy and production departments for Hess’s Department Store in Allentown, Pennsylvania and later became Director of Advertising Copy and Production at Day-Timers, Inc. Gwen and her husband Richard, live in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She has two children, Pamela and Christopher, five grandsons, Matt, Mike, Aaron, Mark and Romeo, and three great-grandchildren, Owen, Chloe, and Tegan.

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