Heart of a Wife: The Diary of a Southern Jewish Woman

this book showed great research and the editor, Marcus Rosenbaum, obviously spent long hours working on it.

Helen Jacobus Apte was a remarkable woman. Readers gain an intimate view of a pre-feminist world by reading her very private diary. A Southern Jewess who valued her Southern and Jewish origins equally, Apte lived a comfortable life and served as an articulate witness to vital events in early 20th Century American life. Apte's writing is beautiful and she makes even the most mundane subjects poignant with the quality of her insights and prose. A clear talent,she apparently failed to recognize her ability or chose - for one reason or another - to share it only with her diary. Fortunately for us, her grandson, who discovered the diary long after Apte's death, brought it to publication complete with a series of highly-informative supportive essays which help readers appreciate the times in which his grandmother lived. Apte was a true romantic and may have been one of the last Victorians. In many ways her values are so remote from ours today, that it's a stretch to appreciate her; which makes reading Heart of a Wife a satisfying exploration into real-life history.