The Rosetta Stone

In this coming-of-age story of an American woman of the Greatest Generation (1917-2015), Virginia Wetherbee's memoir evokes vividly her experiences growing up in the 1920s and '30s in a chaotic, eccentric household. Left motherless in the 1918 flu epidemic, Virginia was raised by her larger-than-life father, a doctor whose huge personality, brilliant mind, and shifting enthusiasms dominated their household and the small hospital he ran. Frequently in trouble for her tomboyish ways, she ran wild-a waif with short, disheveled hair and drooping bloomers-until her father remarried a decade later.

Writing about the "see-saw, tragicomic" relationship between father and daughter after his death in 1955, Virginia reflects on her memories to free herself from his shadow and come to terms with his mixed legacy. The memoir follows the twists and turns of their relationship from childhood into the postwar years, as she attends college, marries, and raises three children during World War II and its aftermath. Throughout, she explores the role of her stepmother and other figures who shaped her intellectually, emotionally, and morally as she passed through the "rites of passage" that mark a life journey. Virginia's moving story reveals her as an uncommon woman of integrity and compassion, whose quiet domestic life concealed a rich private life of the mind.

Facing her past with raw honesty, wit, and courage, Virginia accepts her heritage in all its complexity and finds the key-the Rosetta Stone-to maturing into a remarkable woman and writer, who has learned that "In each generation, to those who understand, is handed on the duty of weaving that fragile, shining web of love."

The Rosetta Stone is edited, with an introduction and afterword, by Louise Wetherbee Phelps, Virginia's daughter. Professor Phelps is a longtime scholar and educator in the disciplinary study of writing.