Catherine never had a boy friend, never expected to get married. But when Roger asks her to be his wife, she says yes. He’s been a clerk in her father’s grocery store, a boarder in their house, and Catherine’s good friend and companion for many years. Her life won't change much. They’ll go on living in the family home over the store with her parents and her unmarried older sister.
After they marry, Roger moves into her bedroom and little else changes. Catherine still puts her birth family ahead of him. Roger fears that if her demanding and selfish older sister never finds a man, she will end up living with them the rest of their lives. The couple work to carve out a space for themselves within the larger family. Death strikes the head of the household, and changes in the family threaten their marriage.
This is a true story about real people – the author’s own parents – anchored in the words of his mother’s diaries.
“After Mom died,” he writes, “we found her diaries. Starting when she was twenty-four, she kept a daily log for over seventy years. Opening the first, I read about people I knew as a child but now saw through new eyes. I discovered the hidden story of my family.”