The book is handmade; I hadn't realized that until I read her first page more closely. The cardboard cover is covered with a fabric of pink flowers with springs of blue one; inside, she had glued pink paper, covered with a paper that is now, as it may have been then, off-white. The pages of the book are 5x7, 3-hole punch paper, and the book is tied through the top and bottom holes. She pierced the book's cover to accommodate the heavy black twisted silk cord that ties the book together, and in the middle, she sewed a longer length of the cord so that she could tie the diary closed.

The system didn't work perfectly; it was tied a little too tightly at the bottom, or perhaps the cord has shrunk; but the bottom holes have torn through on most of the pages. A little over a third of the book has been used, written in black or blue ink. She numbered the first nine pages at the outside top corners.

At the time the diary begins, Sarah is a student at Vassar College, from which she would graduate in 1932, before marrying my father, Stuart Baldwin, in the fall of 1932. She is at home in Lakewood, Norfolk, Virginia for the Christmas break.