Helene Stauffer Hero (1913-1965) began writing these letters when her eldest daughter went off to college in 1956. More than newsy, they are unfiltered accounts of the highs and lows of a life in the Garden District of New Orleans in the middle of the last century. Mother of five girls, Chair of the Women's Board of the New Orleans Symphony Orchestra and fond of giving parties, these letters are funny, honest, unsparing, disturbing, loving and sad.