Mammie's Journal of My Childhood

About the Book

A mother's journal, streaked with tears and bolstered by the laughter of her daughter's unfading memories, results in Mammie's Journal of My Childhood-a biographical history set in Indonesia in World War II.

From the comforts of colonial Dutch East Indies, Jolly, her mother and brother are thrust into a Japanese internment camp where they spend the next four and a half years separated from Jolly's father, a prisoner of war working on the Burma Railroad. Whether shivering in cool breezes on Brastagi's mountainside or sweating in the moist heat of monsoon-soaked Sumatran jungles, Nettie puts her children first in a valiant race with death. Jolly's childhood is a journey in faith through the worst of times, relieved by episodes of humor and nurtured by heartfelt compassion.

Mammie's Journal of My Childhood gives readers a peek through bamboo fences into the lives of devoted mothers seeking to raise their children with dignity, faith, and love.

About the Author

From ages five to nine, Jolly Toeter Zelling was interned with her mother and brother in a Japanese camp in Sumatra, Indonesia. After the war, she returned to her grandparents? home in The Hague. In 1963, Jolly moved to the United States with her husband, Stephane, and worked as a nurse in his medical office in Middletown, Ohio. Jeanne Belden Tuttle graduated from Smith College in 1957. She is an ordained minister in the United Church of Christ with a Doctor of Ministry degree from Bangor Theological Seminary. She lives in Maine with her husband, Thomas.