PIECE BY PIECE

The true story of an elaborate clock case that a young Mexican American resident of San Antonio made for Franklin Delano Roosevelt as a thank-you gift.

A gingerbread fantasy crafted from 156 pieces of sugar pine crates saved from New Deal food deliveries, the 40-inch-high case sits today in the FDR Presidential Library. It was made in 1937 in recognition of help received during the Great Depression, and here Ruiz-Flores spins news stories and interviews with surviving family members into an affecting account of how young Ernestine Guerrero, a carpenter’s daughter and helper, taught herself woodworking techniques and then painstakingly cut and assembled the case. Neither the author nor López Real seems to know much about carpentry—Guerrero would have needed more than just a coping saw and a chisel, the only tools she’s actually shown using, to carve many of the work’s “interlaced decorative designs”—but in the pictures her serious figure exudes determination, and the finished project is both magnificent and (as a photo at the end shows) accurately rendered. The letter to the president that she composed to go with the gift, which is excerpted in the narrative and shown in full at the end, is likewise marvelous: “This is the best I have ever done in my life. I know that you have many pretty things, but please accept and keep this piece of work from a poor girl that doesn’t have anything….” (This book was reviewed digitally.)

A small but feel-good historical anecdote.