Annie Callahan Johnston, August 1950: Vera is now five years old and will go to school next year. She reminds me of my mother, Rachel, who passed away last summer, but she has Albert’s kind and sweet heart. Life goes on here on the place, and as the saying goes, the seasons come and the seasons go, but I’m happy in my lot. I have Vera and Albert. We were both forty-two this year on our birthdays, which are only three weeks apart. We are at war again, this time with Korea. The newspapers call our involvement a police action, not a war. I’m glad that Vera was a girl and not a boy who could be drafted. That’s selfish, I know, but the thought of sending my child to war terrifies me.

“One more, please, Mama? We’re to the part now when Granny Vera will start writing in the journal, right?” Holly begged.

“I think there is only one more, so we’ll read it and then you’ve got to get to bed,” Lily told her.

“I promise I will,” Holly said.

Vera Johnston Miller, December 1990: I found this in an old trunk in the attic when I was cleaning it out last week. I don’t know why Mama never mentioned having it. I would have loved to have read all this before now. It’s strange to think that I am biologically related to the people on the historical plaque out in front of this house, even stranger to think of all the women in the family who have written in this journal for more than a hundred years already. I feel an obligation to write my story in this book, but I’m not sure where I should begin. Mother and Daddy are both gone now. They passed away within six months of each other. Like my mother, I was married several years before I had a child. Then I had two beautiful daughters within two years—Rosemary Ann was born first and then Lily Joann. We lost Rosemary before her eighth birthday to a rare form of cancer, but Lily is now nine years old. I held my breath until she passed her eighth birthday, always fearing that I might lose her, too. Mother passed away when Rosemary was only a few months old, but she told me often that she had finally gotten her official badge of honor and was really a grandmother, so her life was complete.

Lily couldn’t put the journal down, though it was getting late. She turned the page and continued to read: