Home on vacation, Sally decides to take a walk down memory lane in her great-grandmother's empty, neglected house. While deciding whether, or not, to take the stairs to the second floor, she snags her sleeve on a hinge attached to a stair tread. Lifting the tread she finds, under old papers, a tin box with a rusted hasp and small padlock. Having nothing to pry it open it with she takes it back to her mother's where they open it together. Inside they discover pages, tied with a ribbon, and notebooks chronicling the lives of Sally's second and third great-grandmothers. For the rest of that day and night they embark on a nostalgic journey of discovery. They read about the idyllic, sometimes happy, lives of the women from their past. The tragic loss of a husband and father, abuse leading to the breakup of the family, loves found and lost, and betrayal yet through it all the women rose above their circumstances to succeed, showing their strength and courage no matter what life threw at them. Sally and her mother found themselves crying, laughing, proud, and angry with each turn of the pages, but agreed, they would not have wanted to miss the story forgotten in the tin box.