Floreana
In 1929 Berlin, Dore Strauch is unhappy with her life—ill with multiple sclerosis, married to an older man she doesn’t love, and straddled with the domesticity of a hausfrau. She falls in love with her physician, Dr. Friedrich Ritter, and they leave the civilized world for Floreana, an isolated and uninhabited island of the Galápagos. Friedrich persuades Dore that she can heal herself by determination alone. But as she doesn’t improve and struggles with the brutal labor of homesteading, Friedrich grows increasingly hostile. Even when two other groups join them on the island, the German Wittmer family and the eccentric Baroness with her two male lovers, Dore’s loneliness increases.
In modern-day Galápagos, Mallory is a biologist who abruptly left her research and conservation work on the islands ten years ago in order to be a mother and wife. But even as she escapes from her domestic Boston life to return to her former lover and the conservation work she so loved, she feels torn between the two experiences. When she discovers the lost journals of Dore Strauch, the original settler of Floreana, Mallory realizes that she could find the real explanation for the mysterious disappearances and deaths that occurred back in the Thirties. If Mallory can get the journals translated from the original German, she can parlay that into money they could use to save the penguins.
But as Dore’s secrets unravel, so do Mallory’s. Based on the true events of the Floreana murders, this reimagining is immersive and supremely well done. The setting is spot on, down to the gentle shushing noises made by the salt-spitting iguanas. The complex relationships in both timelines speak of haunting loneliness that comes with age and marriage. Highly recommended.
