The story starts off with the main character, Sally Carrol, explaining to a good friend of her's, Clark Darrow, why she can't stay in their little southern town of Tarleton. Sally Carrol wants more opportunity, more adventure,and more options. She wants to live it up. She goes on to tell him why she is engaged to a "Yankee" and that she loves the boys in Tarleton, but she could never marry them. Throughout the day, Sally Carrol and Clark go swimming and drive around. Later, Harry, the man she is to marry, comes down to visit Sally Carrol. While he is here, they stop at the cemetery. Sally Carrol goes to the cemetery a lot. She reads the tombstones and imagines what kind of people they were, the life they lived, what they would have become, who they left behind, and what legacy they wanted to leave behind. She always did it by herself. It was her way of feeling in a sense. On this day, she took Harry with her and explained why she did it. She began crying while showing Harry the Unknown tombstones. Worrying that she was being a drag, she makes the comment to Harry, "You don't feel depressed, do you, lover? Even when I cry I'm happy here, and I get a sort of strength from it." Later, she goes up North to be with Harry in January before they are to wed in March. While there, she describes everything as "cold". The weather, the house, and the people. She wanted to be up North to be free and live big, but life up North wasn't quite as she expected. She starts getting "cold" feet, so she proposes to have the wedding then that way she can't back out. Harry denies and says they should have the wedding in March as planned. Sally Carrol agrees and brushes off feelings as silliness. Later they go to this strange, big, palace made of ice. Harry darts of in a tunnel, leaving Sally Carrol alone. she begins looking through the network of tunnels for Harry to no avail. She is lost and cold. She sits down and begins to cry. All of a sudden, a procession of people come by, one of them stops and talks to Sally Carrol. She instantly recognizes her to be a lady from one of the tombstones she had read at home. She waits, and then someone picks her up. She comes to and realizes where she is. She begins screaming and saying that she wants to go home After this, the book promptly goes back to her hometown in Tarleton. She is home again, and happy. The book ends almost exactly the way it began, only Sally Carrol knows she is right where she belongs.
I realized how much I am like Sally Carrol. I have thrown away people because they were "nice, but I know there are better people out there." I have walked away from people who wanted to be there for me because they didn't fit my agenda. I have wasted entire seasons of my life because I was stubborn. I just knew that there was something better, so why waste my time. All too soon, in this whirlwind of life, those people who were just options in my mind were gone. Almost instantly, I realized what I had lost. I was thrown into a crowd of "cold" people. In all honesty, I had gotten everything I ever wanted, I was where I had thought I wanted to be for so long, but now I realize that I belong with those people that I threw away. Those people who were "nice, but not really in my life plan," are everything I ever wanted, everything I ever needed, but I'm afraid it's too late to salvage the wreckage of my actions. I can't go back in time and change what I did, and unlike Sally Carrol, I can't just go back. But I relate to her experience so well. Sometimes we think we know what we want and what we need, never realizing that we are living our own dream until the dream is over. We have these visions of the life we think we want and we let that get in the way of what our soul really needs, and miss everything that God had planned for us. I often wonder what my life would be like now if I had seized the moment, realized what great people I had at fingertips, and go of what I thought I wanted. I want to learn from this though. I made a vow to myself to never wish to be in a different circumstance, because every season in life has so much to offer if I just get past how much greener I think the grass is somewhere else. I'm telling you this about me, because I hope you can learn from what I did. I wish so bad to save everyone from this awful mistake. I feel like that if anyone is reading this, they will go about their life, maybe be moved while they are reading, but walk away and not have learned. I just want to stress the importance of gratitude in all circumstances, because it is better to enjoy and live in the moment you are in, than to look back later and realize how great things were and that you spent the whole time whining. Learn from my pain rather than your own if you can.
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