Bella writes her diary during World War I, but the war is very far away and rarely mentioned. She does, however, allow us entry into the household of women making a living on their own. We see Bella and her widowed mother doing a wide variety of things including quilting for the war effort and farming on a small scale to get by. You can attain a view of widowhood and, what was then known as spinsterhood, as Bella never marries and is thirty-nine when she begins her diary.