"Early in the spring of 1948, Stephanie Grant, a sixteen-year-old shorthand typist in England, submitted her name to a London newspaper, which offered to advertise for pen friends in the American Midwest. In Akron, Ohio, Paul Duke, an eighteen-year-old college student, happened on the advertisement and responded. Thus began a pen-pal relationship that lasted a full year and resulted in the meeting in person of the two writers" -- Inside jacket.