Lost Island

Follett, who published her 1927 novel, The House Without Windows, at age 12, before disappearing in 1939, left in her papers this engaging story of a restless young woman. Jane Carey, tired of soothing her friends’ troubles and bored with her job as an entomologist’s secretary, yearns for the wildness of her Maine childhood, which she fled after leaving her fiancé at the altar. She impetuously signs up to join the crew of the schooner Annie Marlow and, once on board, endears herself to the other sailors, especially the captain—she reminds him of his deceased daughter—and Davidson, a Joseph Conrad–adoring second mate. When the ship goes down in a squall, only Jane and Davidson survive, drifting on the open sea. They eventually land on an uninhabited island where they rhapsodize their primitive lifestyle and fall in love. After three years, a research team arrives on the island and rescues them, despite their hesitation to return to modernity. Back in New York, their choices pull them apart as Jane grapples with reintegrating into her old life. The zesty, ratatat dialogue echoes the era’s screwball comedies, and the plot flies by. It’s a strange thrill to encounter this assured young writer’s voice emerging from the ether. (Self-published)