Helena Christine Stokes was a young woman when she left her small hometown in Ohio and headed for New York City to prepare for a job that would send her on a journey overseas and into World War II.

The years that followed were chronicled in her frequent letters home to her mother and sisters, detailing the life of an American Red Cross worker through the dark days of the Second World War.

It would take over seventy years for those letters and diary entries to find their way into the story that both celebrates and preserves the history of that time. The letters are strengthened by her granddaughter’s perspective as she worked to record her late grandmother’s journey.