Clara's journal reveals to us a passionate red-headed girl with a talent for independent thought and the courage to follow a single purpose to its conclusion. The story of a virtual orphan raised on a frontier farm is a personal history of life in California between the years 1890 to 1970. She writes of the delights brought about by invention, such as an overnight ride on the California Zephyr. She tells of prohibition coming to wine country, and of waiting for news from the front during World War II.

Before they had the vote, a surprising number of women worked in the professions. Clara was a country doctor and later a specialist with a large practice in downtown San Francisco, with a talent for healing. Her journal reveals the adventures of raising a family in the days when house calls in a Model T Ford were part of a doctor's routine. We learn of her plan to overcome prejudice and of her fight for professional survival.

Clara's journal is full of people, friends of all sorts, of romance, weddings, births, and deaths, gatherings, travel, philosophical musings and the answer to a mystery only the reader of her journal can resolve.