In 1850, Sarah Owen Burgess, twelve year old daughter of a Nantucket sea captain, took up her pen to begin a personal journal. Over the years she created, albeit unintentionally, a fine history of her beloved island as it was transformed from an island made wealthy by the thriving whaling industry to an island suffering the economic blow of the coming of the railroad to the mainland, thereby, making the transportation of whale oil and its by-products, easier to transport. It is a story of one girl's coming of age on the cusp of two major economic epochs in American history complete with travel, friendship, love and, the output of an inquiring, curious mind.