One Slice of Time

She was sixteen years old when she realized she was a human being.Marian Mitchell Rietman grew up in Seattle inside a closed religious community — the kind of place that decides, on your behalf, who you will be and what you will do with your life. She had other ideas.By the time the Second World War reached American shores, she had gotten free and found herself on Mercer Island, governess to President Roosevelt's grandchildren, watching history from a quiet and privileged distance. When the war ended she made her choice — married a soldier, homesteaded the Cascade Mountains, farmed the Great Plains, raised five sons, and built a life that belonged entirely to her.Then she crossed the Aegean. Climbed a Colorado fourteener. Danced on a veranda in the Mexican highlands while firecrackers went off in the road — because survival, it turned out, was only the beginning.She began writing her memoirs in 1990. One Slice of Time is what her son found between the lines — the interior life she lived but could never quite bring herself to record, the quality that ran beneath the steady surface she presented to the world.Marian Mitchell Rietman was born into poverty and bound in childhood to a rigid religious sect where obedience was demanded and childhood was optional. She escaped not with fanfare, but through quiet grit, a suspicious eye toward dogma, and a dry sense of humor that rarely failed — even when everything else did.From those narrow beginnings, she carved a wide and unpredictable life: working as a governess in the Roosevelt household in wartime Seattle, homesteading deep in the forests of Washington State, and raising five sons in rural Indiana. Along the way, she built homes, survived bears, taught school, processed chickens, and rendered pig fat into soap.In later life she crossed the Aegean, climbed a Colorado fourteener, and danced on a veranda in the Mexican highlands while firecrackers went off in the road — because survival, it turned out, was only the beginning.If you've ever questioned your beliefs, changed a diaper on a train, or stared down a frozen septic tank with nothing but a prayer and a shovel — Marian's story will feel strangely familiar.About the AuthorJohn "e;Reety"e; Rietman is a retired field geologist, perpetual wanderer, and storyteller at heart. He spent five decades chasing mineral deposits and mapping the world, from the Sahara Desert to the Arctic Ocean. One Slice of Time is the third volume in the Rietman Family Chronicles, preceded by Citizen of the World and Across the Grain of Time. He lives in Missoula, Montana.