Summary

In Chapter I, Terry Tempest Williams writes about her mother’s death. Her mother told Williams she was leaving all her journals to her. After her mother died, Williams decided to read the journals. All of the journals were blank.

In Chapter II, Williams describes how seeing the blank journals was similar to experiencing her mother's death again. Now that she is fifty-four, the age her mother was when she died, she realizes how young her mother was at her death. She knows that her mother’s abilities and desires would always be secrets because she did not write about them in the journals. Williams begins her discussion of voice by writing that her mother’s voice was the first one she heard.

In Chapter III, Williams describes how much of a person’s being has evolved from the sea. She...