"I should hate to live a quiet, cabbage life ... I would rather have a soul, though it must ever be hungry; I would rather live, though it means suffering"

At the age of fourteen, Mary James begins chronicling her life. For the next five years, her diary becomes her closest confidant as she finds her feet as a young woman on the busy streets of Llandaff North and Whitchurch in Cardiff. Her family are property developers and boat builders connected to the bustling Gabalfa Dock on the Glamorganshire Canal.

Family rifts and tragedies, the shortages of a world war, religion, local shops and entertainments, and a passion for education which will lead her to university: Mary James emerges as a courageous and determined voice of her age.

A stunning window into the lives and struggles of a household in Cardiff in the early 20th century, written by a young woman on the cusp of adulthood