Eleanor Van Buskirk Harris is a well-known figure in her native city of Melrose, Massachusetts...While engaged to Robert Somerby Harris, a Harvard graduate and Law School student, she gave up teaching to become leading lady in the Boston Light Opera Company's production of Prince of Pilsen, keeping her promise to marry Bob at the end of "one season only!" But during the teacher shortage of World War II, while her husband taught at Concord High, Eleanor was called to teach at the Centre School in Lincoln, becoming assistant principal. But, she longed to return to her beloved Melrose, hometown of four generations of her family. She was able to do so when Bob was offered teaching posts at Newton High and Newton Junior College. She has since continued her teaching career in the Melrose school system, spending the last six years in junior high music. Eleanor's husband died while their only son, Stephen Robert, was in his junior year at Harvard. Since that time, "Ledgewinds," the clifftop home she planned and built as a memorial to Bob, has become a mecca for young people, as well as for church and civic groups. This story is an intense but delightfully moving account of a POW's mother's year-long vigil, narrated by an unusually gifted and spirited woman.

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