Just like beach glass that starts out as a bottle or a marble or a window, we start out fresh-scrubbed and new, with expectations and intentions set for our lives. And like the glass objects that break in the storms that tumble them, our own intentions also shatter as life tumbles us.

At first the edges are sharp and jagged, dangerous to touch. But eventually these edges soften. When a piece of prized beach glass finally emerges to be found on the sand by the lucky collector, its original form is unrecognizable. Its rare beauty is new and different...not in spite of the breaking, but because of it. We too are formed new with time: more beautiful for having survived our own storms.

Here the author tells the stories of hunting precious beach glass up and down the western coast of Northern America, from the tip of Baja California, Mexico to an island in Washington state, as well as Laguna Beach and surrounding Southern California shores in between. Her descriptive chapters open with delicate ink line drawings of each beach where those hunts took place, and musically sketch the people who searched the shorelines with her, as well as drawing out all the lessons beach glass has to teach us.