Within Polly Grose’s living room fireplace, packed with large specially bound scrapbooks, are the crystals of her memoir.  Pasted on those pages are the photographs, political clippings, and bits of letters and cultural programs that spark the memories of the author’s life in London as well as those of her childhood, marriages, parenting, and career in theater and public affairs administration.

Here is a story of a mid-life Minneapolis working woman who bids farewell to her family and friends to launch a new life in London.  What possessed a firmly rooted community leader to make such a decision?  Combine one part adventure, one part risk-taking, one part anglophilia, and several parts of falling in love with an Englishman to find the answer.

About the Author

Polly has three sons and five grandchildren, and one great-grandson.  She attended Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts and graduated from Metropolitan State University in Minneapolis, where she lived and brought up her family. 

In 1984, Polly remarried and moved to London to live with her English husband, David Grose.  Following her husband's death in 2002, Polly returned to her roots and a condominium overlooking Lake Minnetonka in the western suburbs of Minneapolis.  She is an active member of the Guthrie Theater Board of Directors.  Best of all are visits to her children and grandchildren on the West Coast, where she bounds into their lively activities.

What's Being Said

Polly Grose is truly a citizen of the world.  Her deep and abiding engagement with her native Minnesota combined with the adventures of her London years make her story compelling an distinctive.  Her love and support for the arts has made her a legend in her own community.

-Joe Dowling, Director, Guthrie Theater

This is a story of love and spunk.  Her British husband’s mastery of the art of scrapbooking—preserving mementoes around themes—helped inspire Polly Grose’s high energy, openhearted memoir of her midlife marriage and move from the Midwest to London.  This memoir, like creative scrapbooking, is about getting the most out of life and then making sense of it all.  Polly Grose, in her fourth book, has done this superbly.

-Jane Thomas Noland, author, former senior editor of CompCare Publishers