Mable Riley
In the attic of my grandmother's house, I recently found a box containing several of her diaries, the oldest dating from 1901 and 1905. The first was written during her initial year as a teacher in a one-room school house in Southern Ontario. The second was written during her honeymoon - a train trip to Western Canada - during which she mentions her new husband exactly twice.
There was very little in the content of these journals to inspire a story, but the penciled pages and the self-conscious language prodded me to discover a character who lived at the same time and longed for adventure and romance...