Lina sat curled up on the sofa in the living room, the evening sun casting a warm glow across the room. Lina placed the diary on her raised knees. She took a deep breath to calm herself from what she was about to read. With a trembling hand, Lina opened the pale cream pages of the diary. Her mother’s handwriting felt like a ghost’s touch, soft, graceful, and deeply personal.

She started reading the diary which contains all what her mother had experienced as a teenager. Her mother got herself a diary when she was fifteen. She read about her mother’s experiences from fifteen to eighteen, an experience any normal...