The setting is the seashore and as the author picks up shells she reflects how each symbolizes a facet of her development as a woman from young love to middle age and studies the ebb and flow of human relationships and upholds the importance of the free and individual spirit of woman and man.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh was born in 1906 in New Jersey. She married aviator Charles Lindbergh, and became a renowned aviator in her own right. In 1932, the couple's first baby, Charles, was kidnapped and found dead. The incident caused a media furore, and the Lindberghs retreated to England, and later to an island off the coast of Brittany, before returning to the US in 1938.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh's many books (including biographies, poetry, general non-fiction and diaries) won her several prestigious awards andA Gift from the Seamade her a household name for a generation of women.

Anne Morrow Lindbergh spent her final years in her Connecticut home, continuing her writing projects and enjoying visits from her children and grand-children. She died on February 7, 2001, at the age of ninety-four.