The poem was written by Mrs. Gilbert H. (Helen) Lawrenz, formerly Helen Virginia Brecheisen, the soldier’s sister. At the bottom of the inscription it is signed “Mr. and Mrs. H.N. Brecheisen ...

The distant riots, raucous and hostile, echoed in her ears. There was a hole in her heart, in the shape of her sister, a wrongness in the world that was horrifying and unimaginable. Her universe ...