Duke’s journal is symbolic of the past. It is an “old leather notebook” with a “faded yellow leather strap” and is filled with Duke’s maps, stories, puzzles, riddles, and codes (89). Lily Wilder carries the notebook with her everywhere as she uses it to lead her guests on their tourist expeditions through the desert. The journal offers her access to her father’s old treasure-hunting and exploring pastimes. It also gives her clues to who her father was, why he lived his life the way that he did, and how he felt about Lily. Because Lily sees the journal as an extension of her late father—with whom she had a fraught relationship—she often wishes she could “put [the] journal away and never have to look at it again” (11). Her negative regard for the journal illustrates her complex relationship with the past. Indeed, Lily similarly compartmentalizes her memories of her childhood and her father to quell her internal unrest. Doing so only augments her anxiety in the present.

Lily learns to reconcile with the past when she lets herself become acquainted with Duke’s journal. After her group realizes that Terry Trottel “took the journal, Lily begins to wonder if “there’s information about treasure” inside of it (126).