author
Esther Sayles Root
1894–1981
A firsthand World War I memoirist, she turned her experiences in wartime Paris into vivid letters that became a published book. She is also remembered for a landmark fight to keep her own name after marriage, linking her writing to a wider story of women's rights.
1 Audiobook
Over Periscope Pond : Letters from two American girls in Paris October 1916-January 1918
by Esther Sayles Root, Marjorie Crocker
About the author
Born in New Jersey in 1894, Esther Sayles Root became known as a writer, war correspondent, and feminist. During World War I, she served in France as an ambulance driver working among refugees, and the letters she wrote from Paris were later published with Marjorie Crocker as Over Periscope Pond: Letters from Two American Girls in Paris, October 1916–January 1918.
Her life also became part of women's history in the United States. After marrying Franklin Pierce Adams, she challenged government rules that tried to erase her maiden name, and she is remembered for successfully seeking a passport issued in the name "Esther Sayles Root, wife of Franklin Pierce Adams." She was associated with the Lucy Stone League and the National Woman's Party, causes that matched her long public interest in women's rights.
She died in 1981. Today, she is best remembered for combining personal witness, public conviction, and clear, human writing in a book that preserves one young American woman's view of Europe at war.