Louise Decker was born in 1912 in Otsego, Michigan. While writing this diary, she lived on Washburn Street and Dayton in Kalamazoo Michigan. She died on July 16, 1998 in Kalamazoo.

She kept this diary over five years between 1939 and December 1942. She recorded an entry of three or four lines almost every day. Every day she wrote about what she and her husband, Frank, did and about the weather. Most of the entries are about cleaning the house, shopping with her sister, visiting her parents, going out with her husbands, and parties with friends. Occasionally she also wrote about the beginning of World War II but only records major events. In the notes at the back of the diary she kept a record some of Frank’s wages and the changes to her and Frank’s jobs, and also recorded the dates that Frank got his draft, classification, and changes to his classification, and the beginning of gas rationing.