Roses in December

This is the autobiography of author Frances Parkinson Keyes, who was my great-grandmother's first cousin. She was born in 1885, and it was published in 1960, but she frequently refers to contemporary family letters, so there is possibly less memory-error than in some similar memoirs. (Now I want to go to New Orleans to see if they have her papers at Beauregard House!)

Taken as a whole the book is sort of fascinating in its Henry James-esque story of America vs. old Europe, social climbing through husbandry, and such-like. Keyes mother was - well, a woman with Goals and Means of Achieving Them. If I'd been her daughter, I too might have married as soon as it was legal for me to do so. Below are some passages specific to my family history.

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