Letters from Clara

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One Intrepid Woman's Travels on the Eve of War, 1936–1939

Janet Newman

Travel with Clara Pagel as she journeys across the globe at a tumultuous time—and shares her adventures through letters back home.

216 pages, 5.5 x 8.5, 14 b&w photos
Paperback: $22.95 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-987-1
Ebook: $15.99 | ISBN: 978-0-87020-988-8
Publication Date: 6/13/2022

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Description

Relish the stories of the real-life, epic journey of intrepid Wisconsin voyager Clara Pagel, who adventured through Europe, the Far East, and the Middle East for three years just prior to the start of World War II. Author Janet Newman annotates a unique collection of Clara’s letters to YWCA members back home, which chronicle her travels around the world and her journey of self-discovery.

Despite limited financial means, the ever-resourceful Pagel used her YWCA network to find work and places to live in the Far East, along the way meeting other women also working their way around the world. Her sojourn was filled with visits to museums and world-famous landmarks, but also with tales of typhoons and bombings in Shanghai, Italy under Mussolini’s rule, and an earthquake in the Philippines. In her letters, Pagel conveys delight, curiosity, and a growing understanding of the wider world—its people, politics, cultural traditions, and economic divides. Upon her return to the United States in 1939, she enrolled at the University of Chicago, where she earned an MBA at the age of forty-six before completing officer training and serving in the women’s coast guard reserve. Together, her stories reveal a fascinating picture of a woman finding her way in a world on the edge of upheaval.

Author Bio

Janet Newman spent most of her career in education, from working as the only high school English teacher in the second-smallest school district in Wisconsin, to teaching communication as an adjunct on a four-year UW campus, to administrative positions with colleges in Central Wisconsin. In addition, she spent six years as executive director of the YWCA of Wausau, where she found Clara Pagel’s letters that formed the basis of her book, Letters from Clara. Newman and her husband live in Stillwater, Minnesota, where she belongs to three book clubs, a writers' group, and the Friday Study Club, a women’s organization dating back to 1923.

With self-deprecating humor and hard-earned compassion, Clara Pagel wins readers’ hearts with her newsy, intimate missives. Her descriptions of cultural traditions are evocative, her musings on women’s changing roles surprisingly relevant and oddly familiar. "Letters from Clara" is an inspiring story of the good things that happen when one says yes to the unexpected life.