In the waning days of World War II, two ingénues from small-town Story City, Iowa, got off the train in New York, looking for glamour, excitement and romance in the big city.

Though they lived on the proverbial shoestring, Marjorie Jacobson and Marty Garrett had everything they needed: white gloves, sunny dispositions, a tiny walkup apartment and summer jobs as pages at the world’s premier jeweler, Tiffany & Co.

Sixty years later, Jacobson (now Marjorie Hart) recalls those halcyon days in a memoir that will make you nostalgic for America’s Age of Innocence, even if you didn’t live through it.

The 1940s were a turning point in the liberation of America’s women. Because the menfolk were at war, they held jobs previously denied them; Marjorie and Marty were the first female employees to work the Tiffany sales floor.

For them, Manhattan was like Emerald City, and everything was a thrill, from eating at the Automat to jitterbugging at Jack Dempsey’s Bar, from visiting Tiffany’s exclusive third floor to watching newlyweds Vincente Minnelli and Judy Garland shop for baubles. Both girls found love at a midshipmen’s ball, and Hart’s account of her summer romance with a sailor on leave is wistfully sweet.

The girls also witnessed historic events: a tickertape parade to honor General Eisenhower, the arrival in New York Harbor of 14,000 returning servicemen and the 24-hour V-J Day party in Times Square.

As she recounts that dangerous-yet-idyllic time—which also included moments of heartbreak, as boys from home lost their lives at war—Hart is funny and touching, but never saccharine.

This little book will delight anyone who yearns for a return to old-fashioned virtues, and reminds us that women, too, were part of the Greatest Generation.

By Marjorie Preston

Marjorie is Managing Editor of Casino Connection Atlantic City.