Frances and Viky

the long version

It is 2010. Frances has lived a long happy life and her ashes were interred in the church yard under a favorite Ponderosa pine. Her son requested help from the author and his wife who had a mini-van to move household items from the casita at the care home. Weeks later the son revealed that he had discovered a shoe box full of letters Mother Frances kept from the eventful decade of the 1930's. She was a student of art history then and wished to tour Europe. In school, through one of her teachers, she connected as a pen pal with a young Austrian Viky. The author weaves events about the attempts of the young girl to visit Europe and the charming Austrian, from her diaries and the letters, into the fabric of earth shaking world events of the times. The story is true, and often the truth is an onerous discovery among the facts surrounding new-found friends. Based on a true story from letters by a Viennese to an American Teacher in the Depression, 1929-1946.