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After Anne Morrow Lindbergh's death in 1986, a group including family and friends gathered her writings from 1947 to the end of her life and put them in book form. There are many of the countless letters she wrote and her diary entries from various periods of her life.

She didn't have an easy life by any means. Both she and Charles were super cautious about being recognized in public, having been traumatized by the media attention when their first child was abducted. They were also quite protective of their five surviving children and Anne gave them unconditional love. In such a large family there were always changes, problems, travel, heartbreak, and joy.

Anne was a writer, well remembered for her GIFT FROM THE SEA, but she was more a thinker. I read this book at a time of crisis in my own life when I struggled to think clearly, so I was amazed at her ability to find a way to think things through with logic and far-seeing connections no matter what was going on in her life.

I came to a desire to know more about Anne Lindbergh because I wanted to learn more about Charles Lindbergh, but reading about her has been much more rewarding to me. I think this can be counted as an important book in women's history in 20th century America. ( )

Nothing was real to Anne Morrow Lindbergh until she wrote about it. Most of her adult life she made detailed journal entries and wrote copious letters exploring and explaining her thoughts in order to sharpen her powers of observation and reflection. After five earlier volumes published between the early 1970s and 1980, this collection of letters and journal entries covers the years from 1947 to 1986, as her five surviving children grow up, get married and have children and even grandchildren of their own, but before a series of strokes starts to diminish her ability to communicate.

It’s very interesting to get a glimpse inside the later years of her marriage to trailblazing aviator Charles Lindbergh, a brilliant but difficult man who could be demanding and controlling. Anne describes him in one entry as a determined seeker of a black and white truth. He seemed to spend as much time away from the family as with it, and once Anne had to turn down an invitation to dine at the White House because she didn’t know where he was or when he’d be back. It has since been revealed that he had children with at least three other women, but that’s not covered in this book. Anne does write about relationships she had with other men that may or may not have involved having an affair, emotional or otherwise. In 1949 she updated her thoughts about matrimony in an insightful and thought provoking three page entry in her journal titled “Marriage Vows Annotated After Twenty Years.”

Anne also writes about the difficulty of balancing creative work and family life, her struggle with whether or not to terminate a pregnancy that eventually ended in miscarriage, the discovery that her mother’s death has as much to teach her about love as her children’s births, her uneasy blend of happiness and resentment when her husband’s book becomes popular since writing is her thing not his, and her mixed feeling about the public admiration for Gift From the Sea, a book she worked on and mused about for several years. Like any collection, some parts are more compelling than others but overall this is an affecting and fascinating book.

This review is based on an advanced review copy. ( )