[In late 1933, in response to reviews of her recent memoir, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,] Gertrude Stein's literary agent had been trying to persuade her to write a sequel, as scandalous and accessible as the first. She was also being urged to return to the U.S. for a book publicity tour. But Stein was almost sixty years old, and had always been susceptible to anxiety. She had not set foot in her homeland for thirty years, and the mere prospect of traveling so far and speaking to so many strange (and potentially hostile) audiences was enough to terrify her. For a long time she declined, and then, in July of 1934, she began to warm up to the idea. She wrote to Carl Van Vechten [her close friend and, later, her literary executor, who was a journalist-turned-novelist from Cedar Rapids, Iowa], "I am slowly but steadily getting pleased about getting over there and so is Alice, we begin to talk about it quite now as if we were going and even beginning to feel confident about it."

That same month, [another Iowa-born friend, an expatriate painter named William Edwards] Cook wrote to Stein and Toklas to say, "We will follow your trip to America with the greatest interest. Am very glad you are going. There is nothing to be nervous about. You will have a wonderful time and the thing to do is to go."

Soon after, Stein replied to him that "Yes we are going over there and the Time Club [sic] of the town of The University of Iowa invites us to speak…Is that anywhere near Independence [Iowa, Cook's hometown]? We would love to lecture in Independence but I am afraid it is too far away. It almost feels like a home tour."

As it happened, Stein and Toklas arrived at New York harbor on October 24, 1934, and returned to Paris on May 4, 1935. During a stay of about six months, they had, as Cook predicted, a marvelous time, traveling by airplane and automobile across the entire U.S., giving lectures at schools and museums. . .

[In late 1933, in response to reviews of her recent memoir, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas,] Gertrude Stein's literary agent had been trying to persuade her to write a sequel, as scandalous and accessible as the first. She was also being urged to return to the U.S. for a book publicity tour. But Stein was almost sixty years old, and had always been susceptible to anxiety. She had not set foot in her homeland for thirty years, and the mere prospect of traveling so far and speaking to so many strange (and potentially hostile) audiences was enough to terrify her. For a long time she declined, and then, in July of 1934, she began to warm up to the idea. She wrote to Carl Van Vechten [her close friend and, later, her literary executor, who was a journalist-turned-novelist from Cedar Rapids, Iowa], "I am slowly but steadily getting pleased about getting over there and so is Alice, we begin to talk about it quite now as if we were going and even beginning to feel confident about it."

That same month, [another Iowa-born friend, an expatriate painter named William Edwards] Cook wrote to Stein and Toklas to say, "We will follow your trip to America with the greatest interest. Am very glad you are going. There is nothing to be nervous about. You will have a wonderful time and the thing to do is to go."

Soon after, Stein replied to him that "Yes we are going over there and the Time Club [sic] of the town of The University of Iowa invites us to speak…Is that anywhere near Independence [Iowa, Cook's hometown]? We would love to lecture in Independence but I am afraid it is too far away. It almost feels like a home tour."

As it happened, Stein and Toklas arrived at New York harbor on October 24, 1934, and returned to Paris on May 4, 1935. During a stay of about six months, they had, as Cook predicted, a marvelous time, traveling by airplane and automobile across the entire U.S., giving lectures at schools and museums. . .

Unfortunately, because of unavoidable circumstances, she [Stein] was never able to visit Iowa. On a winter flight from St. Paul, Minnesota, to Chicago, where she was scheduled to connect with a chartered flight to Iowa City, bad weather forced her plane to land in Waukesha, Wisconsin, a suburb of Milwaukee. At the very least, she had hoped that her plane might fly over Cook's hometown of Independence, during daylight hours, so she could see it from the air. But a major blizzard had hit Chicago, and instead they had to take a train from Milwaukee to Chicago and cancel her engagements in Iowa City. Had she been able to get there, she had been scheduled to lecture at The Times Club, or (as it was sometimes called) The Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Speakers, the gatherings of which were held in downtown Iowa City, on the second floor of what is now the Prairie Lights Bookstore. . .

Writing to Cook from New York, Stein expressed her disappointment at not being able to see Iowa: "We almost saw your birthplace Cook but the airplane struck a blizzard and would not fly and so we didn't, but it is a nice country all the same." To which he replied, "Too bad the plane wouldn't take you over Independence in a blizzard. It used to be lovely in a blizzard. I don't know now.

"They are nice out there. You will like them if you get out there.

"We see they have found you a club.

"They should. You must be having a wonderful time, someday you will tell us about it."

And of course Stein did exactly that. She told the entire world all about "what happened after The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" and about her adventures in America in a second autobiography (just as she had been advised by her literary agent) titled Everybody's Autobiography, published in 1937.