In May of 1929, Jessie Eliza Todd and her older sister Louie embarked on an adventure that took the two young women from Southland in New Zealand, sailing by ship to England. In the interim, they visited Australia, Ceylon, Africa, and Italy.

In "A Mother's Memoirs," author Margaret Jessie Munro, Jessie's Todd's daughter, offers a transcription of the diary Jessie kept during the trip. It shares a host of details as the pair traveled by sea and then purchased a 1928 Morris Oxford convertible in England, facilitating a number of excursions around Britain and beyond. They drove north and...