The Salt Island Diaries

The diaries were written 1847-1848 by residents of a cliff-house near Gloucester, Massachusetts. The main narrators are the two teen-age daughters of a ship captain’s widow. They are overly-educated, overly-playful, and overly-delighted in reporting the developments at their otherwise boring and remote family home: A feral and mute girl, is discovered in a nearby forest, and is delivered to the house as a distant family member. The next arrival has accused the local pastor of abuse, and has thereby become an outcast from her own family. Then, the mysteriously talented and dark-skinned maid of a merchant family.

Shunned by Victorian society at nearly every turn, they are forced to improvise in order to survive. The secrets they must keep do not tear them apart; but rather, draw them into sisterhood.

The highly gender-segregated and patriarchal society of the 19th century gave rise to underground female networks of passionate relationships — more than friends, less than lovers — a fascinating hack for a society gone awry, perhaps even today’s.

First two entries 6 July 1847
A Distant and Awesome Beacon