Diary of a Waitress: The Not-So-Glamorous Life of a Harvey Girl by Carolyn Meyer (review)

Abstract

Reviewed by: Diary of a Waitress: The Not-So-Glamorous Life of a Harvey Girl by Carolyn Meyer Elizabeth Bush Meyer, Carolyn Diary of a Waitress: The Not-So-Glamorous Life of a Harvey Girl Calkins Creek, 2015 348p ISBN 978-1-62091-652-0 $17.95 Ad Gr. 5-8 Kitty Evans can’t understand the casualness with which her family delivers the shattering news: a downturn in her father’s business means she won’t be attending college, and she should plan to begin work at the local shoe store right away. It’s 1926, and Kitty has bigger plans for a journalism career, and if college can’t be her route to independence, then surely signing on as a Harvey Girl waitress will be her ticket to new adventures and a broader worldview. Landing the job isn’t difficult, and her parents swallow pride and skepticism to reluctantly support her decision. The reality of the job itself, though, is quite another matter. First there’s a month of unpaid training at one of the smaller Harvey depot restaurants, at which the new hires stay in a tightly supervised hotel wing and put in long hours learning the meticulous detail of “the Harvey Way” of hospitality, serving train passengers on strict schedules, as well as railroad workers and townsfolk. With hard work and luck, the probationary period concludes with a brief visit home and then reassignment further along the Santa Fe Railway line. The Harvey waitress schedule doesn’t leave much time for launching a journalism career, but with some advice from an editor patron, Kitty hones her observational skills and sells her first stories based on local events in her depot assignments. Kitty and several of her waitress friends could easily have propelled any number of subplots, but Meyer keeps the blossoming romances tepid, the women’s rights theme underexplored, and hints of racial discrimination and social censure of the “loose” Harvey Girls left largely unexamined. Nonetheless, the Harvey Girl experience, which offered many young women a career path other than teaching, nursing, or motherhood, will certainly be of interest to historical fiction fans. Copyright © 2015 The Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois