Seawrack and Moonbeams is the memoir of Charlotte Hudson, born into an affluent and upper-class Christchurch family in the 1930s. Her experiences and observations are of a world that has long since disappeared. Her upbringing was very much in the Victorian manner, complete with a nanny and servants, a mansion and trips overseas. When she fell in love her parents sent her on a trip around the world to test the strength of the relationship. It survived the separation and they married. Charlotte recounts her life as a married woman, and her experiences as a mother. She suffered tragedies: her mother's illness, the death of a child and the serious accident of another have all been trials she has overcome. Charlotte's story is one of a woman of the last generation to experience the strongly separated roles of women and men in society, where her role after marriage was to become a housewife, there to see to the comforts of her husband and children.