Driftwood in a Time of War Book

Few women journalists have been as well placed as Marie Christopherson to record and comment on the sweeping changes that small-town America was undergoing during the War years 1942 to 1944. As the wife of the most powerful newspaper editor in South Dakota, she wrote upon his command. And yet she became the most forceful voice for women's rights that her state has known and displays as well in many of her weekly columns the acute and supple mind that is the hallmark of the first-rate essayist.

Her columns were published in the Sioux Falls (South Dakota) Argus Leader beginning on June 26, 1942, and ending on July 30, 1944. The objects of her observation were as varied as her changing world, for she wrote about nearly everything she saw, both in Sioux Falls and in her travels abroad.

As interesting as the variety are the themes to which Marie Christopherson turns again and again: there is much phoniness and pretense in the reporting of the War; the War has changed this far-off rural state more than any other event in its history; writing like this and talking together binds us together; and, women of America have as great a sense of responsibility for helping win this war as have men, and if our country were mobilized - as has been necessary with our invaded allies - the Women's Army Corps would be besieged with recruits.

What this generous collection of columns exhibits above all is the energy, passion, and commitment of one woman, energetic in executing her journalistic assignment and passionate in her defense of women as strong, competent, and patriotic.