Memories of My Childhood: Discoveries of a Young Mind During the Era of World War II

As an adult, Mary Stewart Swanson visited five of the sixteen houses in which she had lived as a child. This experience opened a floodgate of memories and evoked powerful emotions ranging from delight to devastation.

In Memories of My Childhood, she presents these memories as if she is reliving them in the present moment with no knowledge of what the future holds. She also grants this inner child the ultimate gift of self-expression–the use of all the complex language she needs to convey the thoughts and feelings she is experiencing.

Childhood is, for all human beings, a time of astonishing discovery. Day by day, the little girl who narrates this unprecedented memoir discovers with fresh vision the inescapable realities and diversities of earthly life–the power and poignancy of birth and death, love and loss, beauty and brutality, trust and betrayal, horror and happiness.

The unique experiences recounted in Memories of My Childhood also provide intriguing insights into the culture of America in the 1930s and 1940s and dramatize the powerful effects of World War II on our nation’s civilian population.