Brenda Niall has turned her biographer's eye to a personal subject - her grandmother, Aggie. She tells the story of a fiercely independent and intelligent woman who braved a new country as a single woman, teaching in a country school, before marrying a Riverina grazier, whose large powerful family was wary of the newcomer with ideas of her own.

Aggie dealt with hardships and loneliness after the early and drawn-out death of her husband, and brought up her seven children to be happy - all with a calm determination. But it was the memory box and her longing for the sea that captured the imagination of her granddaughter.