Excerpts from his personal diaries help chronicle Robert Cushman Murphy's experiences aboard one of the last Yankee whaleships out of New Bedford, on a voyage to the Antarctic in 1912.
In 1948, nine-year-old Katy Sue's mother dies suddenly, and she and her family spend the next year trying to recover from their loss, assisted by her Aunt Katherine, who quits her teaching job to help out on their Iowa farm.
