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Albanian Rose
The Adventures of Rose Wilder Lane, 1886 - 1968
by Dianne L. Beetler
 
     

Excerpts:

Rose Wilder Lane seated herself sideways in the wooden box-like saddle, crossed her legs, and lit a cigarette. It was April 1921, and with two other American women, she was exploring the mountains of northern Albania.

Rose, a journalist, was the daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder, who would later write the popular “Little House” series of children’s books. Rose had already written several books herself, including biographies of Henry Ford and Herbert Hoover . . .

. . .

. . . A few days after arriving in Tirana, the American women experienced a Balkan revolution. A mountain chief brought a hundred horsemen into the city and exchanged gunshots with government soldiers. For several days, the mountaineers remained barricaded in a section of the city while they negotiated with a government official.

At four o’clock one morning, two government officials tapped on a window of the house where Rose and Peggy were staying and asked permission to visit. The women perched on their beds, threw their coats around their shoulders and in the darkness, discussed a variety of subjects with the men. Rose and Peggy understood that the men had come for protection, not to make a social call.

A few days later, one of the men, Djimil Bey Dino, the secretary to the minister of foreign affairs, joined Rose on the second floor of the Red Cross building, where many Americans had gathered for safety. He had just begun telling Rose he loved her when a grenade hit the dining room and rifles and machine guns began firing.

“Well, we have had a most exciting time; my first battle,” Rose wrote to her parents. “And probably the most romantic and altogether marvelous love-affair that anyone had outside of a book; I would not believe that such things could happen if it hadn’t happened to me. Battle, murder, sudden death and love all in one heap, all in two days. And without any warning at all.” . . .

 

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