It is the start of 1941, and Marguerite writes to Maude, describing her shock at the news of the bombing of England, and ending her letter with a request from her friend for advice on how to write a letter to her former boyfriend in Costa Rica. Maude reports that the arial bombing in England is mercifully in hiatus. She describes the destruction in Liverpool, but also looks hopefully to the future.

Marguerite writes of starting at the Quaker Friends School that she is attending in Baltimore while living with her Uncle Owen and Aunt Eleanor.  Meanwhile, life is much more tense across the ocean.  The London blitz that began in September 1940 intensifies and other cities are bombed including Coventry, and Liverpool where Maude lives.  She writes to Marguerite of the night she was caught out in the August 28 bombing.

February 1939. Maude describes her first impressions of Liverpool, her neighbourhood and neighbours, as well as preparations that the people of Liverpool are making for the imminent war.

Fall 1938. In Marguerite’s first letter to Maude, she describes arriving in Panama and then Costa Rica, travelling by train to the town of Cartago. Maude replies with a letter of settling into her new home in Liverpool, England.