Heart of a Wife: The Diary of a Southern Jewish Woman

Born in Hawkinsville, Georgia, Helen Jacobus Apte spent the majority of her life in Atlanta and Florida. The daughter of German immigrants who had each come to the United States at young ages, Apte identified strongly as both an American and a Jew. Although illness forced her to leave school at the age of sixteen, Apte was a gifted writer who might have pursued the craft professionally had she been born in another time and been in better health. She settled for keeping a diary, which she began following her marriage at the age of twenty-two.