My book, Dearest Minnie, began when I was ten years old though I didn’t know it at the time.  I received a large box containing three albums filled with postcards from around the world from an estate of someone I had never met.   I spent hours studying the pictures on the cards.  As an adult my fascination grew.  I took the postcards out of their disintegrating albums to discover they had been sent to my grandfather’s cousin, Minnie Camp from the USS Virginia during the Great White Fleet cruise around the world. Thus began my research and passion for this period of history.