The Delightful Miss Carrie

      Please join us at the Museum on Tuesday, August 30 at 6:30 p.m. for a very special program and book signing with author Sonja Bartimus. The author’s recently released biographical novel is “The Delightful Miss Carrie,” which recounts the true-life adventures of Carrie Watson Dinsmore, born in Vallejo in 1889, who had summed up her experiences as a “life tapestry of gold and gray threads.”

     After her mother’s death in 1897 when Carrie was just 8, her father came   to her and said, “I’ve discovered a gold mine! We’re rich!” Carrie’s adventures then unfold, taking her from the mines of California and two major fires at the family’s lumber ranch in Calaveras County, through the devastating 1906 San Francisco earthquake, the Great Depression that robbed her of her fortune, and her eye-witness account of the 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor. Along the way,  her life was punctuated with London tea parties, ocean voyages, and the heart-rending losses of the two men she loved. “A story of an ordinary person living in extraordinary times –  a story well worth telling,” says the book’s editor.

     The author grew up on a northern Missouri farm, and as a teenager in 1956 had met Miss Carrie. Several years ago Bartimus had a chance to read her memoir, being safe- guarded by Miss Carrie’s granddaughter Carol Borchers, of Kansas City, Mo. They decided to honor Miss Carrie’s wishes by turning   her story into a book. Bartimus has worked as a reporter and written freelance articles for several magazines. “The Delightful Miss Carrie” is her first book.