Bonnie Bedford Park

In 1934, Dr. Lelia McLatchey Skinner and husband T. Wayne move back to their one-time residence in Sewell, Chile – a copper mining company town – to earn enough money to pay for their children’s educations. The catch? They had to leave the kids behind in America. Lelia’s guilt unfolds in letters addressed to her eldest daughter, Roberta, flooded with angst and worry.
Roberta lands on the campus of Smith College in 1937 at the onset of WWII. The college dating scene pairs well with her party-girl ways. Suitors are evaluated by the measure of her self-devised “man-score.” But in St. Pete, Florida, over Christmas break 1939, Buster Bedford, a Princeton “Tiger” graduate steps in. His studies at Columbia School of Law are interrupted when he enlists. As the Roosevelt administration strategically guides the nation toward U.S. involvement in WWII, Buster implores her to join him in an uncertain future and they rush to wed.
Brides of 1941 is an intimate glimpse into a Greatest Generation coming-of-age story woven around letters unearthed three-quarters of a century later. Robin and Buster’s youngest Baby Boomer daughter reveals it.