This is a collection of letters written during Havreberg's years working as a stenographer in Washington DC in 1936 and later in Ankara, Turkey from 1944 – 1946.
She had left the small town in South Dakota where she grew up to work for Senator Peter Norbeck in his Washington office. After his death, she began looking at opportunities abroad and chose Turkey, which was neutral during most of the war.
The letters are typical of a young woman in her 20’s, full of social activities, descriptions of friends, and a small town girl’s reaction to the big city. She describes in great detail the wartime partying of ambassadors, governments in exile, and Turkish politicians.
But an interesting aspect of her letters is how they reflect the change in woman’s opportunities brought on by the war. The new government agencies in Washington were crying for staff and paying very good wages. A young girl like Havreberg, who had attended a stenographer’s school and was expected to find work in a local office, now had a much broader horizon. Opportunities for travel and the benefits of the big city, attending concerts and lectures, visiting museums, were available to middle class girls as they had not been before. Havreberg was surprisingly open to new experiences and took advantage of all of these.
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