Hitty: Her First Hundred Years

Narrated entirely from the perspective of a small wooden doll, the story spans over a century of American life. Hitty, whose full name is Mehitabel, writes her memoirs from Miss Hunter's antique shop on Eighth Street in New York City. She shares the shop with Theobold, the shop cat.

Hitty begins with her origins. During a bitter Maine winter, a snowbound Old Peddler carves her from mountain-ash wood he carried from Ireland, a material said to bring luck and ward off evil. She is made for seven-year-old Phoebe Preble, whose mother insists the child sew a dress and embroider "HITTY" in cross-stitch on the doll's chemise. On the first Sunday, Phoebe hides Hitty in her muff and smuggles her to church. During the sermon, Phoebe falls asleep and Hitty slips onto the floor. The family leaves without noticing, and Hitty spends days alone in the locked church before Phoebe confesses and the doll is retrieved.

That summer, a crow snatches Hitty and carries her to its nest in the pine tree beside the Preble house. After days of misery, Andy, the family's chore boy, spots her tangled in a branch. Captain Daniel Preble, Phoebe's sea-captain father, hooks Hitty free using a doughnut fork lashed to a long birch pole.

When Captain Preble prepares for a whaling voyage aboard a ship being fitted in Boston, the family travels by stagecoach to join him. Unable to find a cook, the Captain persuades his reluctant wife to fill the role. Mrs. Preble agrees on one condition: The ship's name must be changed from the Diana to the Diana-Kate. The voyage begins.

Life at sea proves eventful. The crew grows fond of Phoebe and Hitty. A tattooed sailor named Bill Buckle builds Hitty a blue sea chest, and Jeremy Folger, a harpooner from Nantucket, becomes a trusted friend. After rounding Cape Horn, a violent storm strikes, and the ship springs a leak and loses her main topmast. The first mate, Patch, who opposed having women aboard, stirs discontent among the crew.

In the South Seas, whaling begins. Jeremy strikes the first sperm whale, and the crew labors around the clock trying out, or boiling, the blubber into oil. Tensions with Patch escalate, and fire breaks out in the blubber room. The whale-oil-soaked ship burns rapidly. Patch and most of the crew seize the longboats and depart. Captain Preble, his family, and three loyal sailors stay behind to steer toward charted islands. When they abandon ship, Phoebe is rushed over the side without Hitty. The Diana-Kate lurches, and Hitty tumbles into the sea.

After days adrift, Hitty washes onto a small coral island where the castaways have taken shelter. When armed natives arrive from a larger island, their chief demands Hitty, whom the natives revere as a god. They install her in a bamboo temple. Bill Buckle explains that possessing someone's god gives the natives power over that person, keeping the Prebles safe. When a passing ship is sighted, Captain Preble plans a nighttime escape. Andy steals Hitty back from the temple. The party rows through the night, burning their clothing as signal torches until the Hesper, a trading vessel bound for India, spots them and takes them aboard at daybreak.

In Bombay, Phoebe falls asleep in Bill Buckle's arms and drops Hitty into a gutter. A Hindu snake charmer picks her up and carries her across India, displaying her beside his hooded cobra. At a remote mission station, an American missionary couple buys Hitty for their daughter, Little Thankful. After two years, Little Thankful falls seriously ill, and her parents send her to grandparents in Philadelphia. At a children's party, the other girls mock Thankful and ridicule Hitty. Humiliated, Little Thankful stuffs Hitty into the crack of a horsehair sofa and abandons her.

Years pass. The sofa moves to the attic, where children discover Hitty during a game. She is adopted by Clarissa Pryce, a quiet ten-year-old Quaker girl who dresses her in proper Quaker clothes. Through Clarissa, Hitty attends a secret outing to hear the singer Adelina Patti perform. In the crowd's frenzy, Clarissa is swept onto the stage beside Patti, with Hitty in hand. The poet John Greenleaf Whittier later visits the Pryce family, examines Hitty, and writes a poem about her. During the Civil War, Hitty observes regiments marching past. Clarissa outgrows dolls and goes to boarding school; Hitty is packed in camphor.

Hitty's box is accidentally sent to the Van Rensselaer house on Washington Square in New York. A seamstress named Miss Milly Pinch discovers and dresses her in elaborate clothes. The family's eight-year-old daughter, Isabella Van Rensselaer, claims Hitty. Through Isabella, Hitty encounters the novelist Charles Dickens, who gallantly returns the doll after Isabella drops her on a sidewalk. Later, during a New Year's Day outing, street urchins snatch Hitty. A boy gives her to his cousin Katie, who takes her to Rhode Island. Katie loses Hitty in a hayloft during a hay wagon ride, and the doll lies buried for years.

A portrait painter named Mr. Farley buys Hitty and adopts her as his mascot, using her in children's portraits as he travels across the country. In New Orleans, two elderly sisters, Miss Hortense and Miss Annette Larraby, dress Hitty in a bridal costume for a Cotton Exposition, where she draws admiring crowds in a glass display case.

Sally Loomis, the daughter of a riverboat captain, steals Hitty from the Exposition and hides her aboard her father's steamboat. After attending a church sermon about the commandment against stealing, the terrified Sally throws Hitty into the Mississippi River during a thunderstorm.

Hitty floats in her basket and is fished out by two Black boys, who give her to a little girl named Car'line on a cotton plantation. At the plantation's Christmas party, Miss Hope, the Colonel's daughter, recognizes Hitty from newspaper accounts of the theft and reclaims her. Miss Hope mails Hitty toward New Orleans, but the package cannot reach its recipients and ends up in the dead-letter office, where undeliverable mail is held.

From there, Hitty passes through a rapid succession of owners, at one point transformed into a pincushion. Eventually, Miss Pamela Wellington, an antique doll collector in Boston, recognizes Hitty's quality, restores her, and makes her the collection's favorite.

On a summer automobile trip to Maine, Hitty bounces out of the car. After passing through several hands, she is purchased by an old lady and brought to a home that turns out to be the original Preble farmhouse. Hitty recognizes the paneling, the carved "P" above the cupboard, and the ancestral pine outside.

When the old lady fails to return one spring, everything is tagged for auction. Bidding for Hitty escalates between a kindly Old Gentleman with a monocle and an aggressive woman. The woman bids 50 dollars and walks away confident, but the Old Gentleman bids 51 dollars just before the hammer falls. He wraps Hitty in his handkerchief and delivers her to Miss Hunter's antique shop in New York, where she is declared a museum piece.

From her shelf, Hitty watches an airplane cross the sky and wonders if she might someday take to the air. She feels hale and ready for more adventures, reflecting that a hundred years is nothing to well-seasoned mountain-ash wood.