The book is told from the point of view of an inanimate doll named Hitty (short for Mehitabel), who was constructed in the 1820s and traveled around the world, through many different owners.

[1] The narrative unfolds through the eyes of a tiny wooden doll named Mehitabel (Hittie), who was carved early in the nineteenth century from the magical wood of the Mountain Ash tree by a peddler for a little girl, Phoebe Preble, who lives on Great Cranberry Island in Maine, during a winter when her father was away at sea.

The wind blew such a gale it heaped great drifts across the road in no time and he was forced to come knocking at the kitchen door of the Preble House, where he had seen a light.

At various times, she is lost at sea, hidden in a horsehair sofa, abandoned in a hayloft, part of a snake-charmer's act, and picked up by the famous writer Charles Dickens, before arriving at her new owner's summer home in Maine, which turns out to be the original Preble residence where she first lived.

In a review of the text, children's literature scholar Cathryn M. Mercier notes that the adaptation removes some of the more archaic and problematic language found in Field's novel, but that Hitty loses some of her distinct characterization.