Last Days of a Toyshop Book

LAST DAYS OF A TOYSHOP and takes an eighteen-year-old girl through the early days of 1941, when the country, recovering from the Depression, has begun to splurge on every new toy that science can invent. The first part of the story is set in Missouri, where the young woman becomes disillusioned with the adults in her life. There follows her first experience with college at a hopelessly Victorian school in Virginia, the perils of being penniless, infatuation with a music teacher, a romance with a Midshipman at the Naval Academy, all of it culminating in the attack on Pearl Harbor and the terrible loss of innocence, affecting both the girl and the country.