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Easter Island

Jennifer Vanderbes (Goodreads Author)

3.69 · Rating details · 1,908 ratings · 318 reviews

Join two intrepid young women as they delve into the centuries-old mysteries of Easter Island. Slowly unearthing the island's haunting past, they are forced to confront turbulent discoveries about themselves and the people they love, changing their lives forever.

In this extraordinary fiction debut—rich with love and betrayal, history and intellectual passion—two remarkable ...more

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Paperback, 320 pages

Published June 1st 2004 by Dial Press Trade Paperback (first published 2003)

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Jun 29, 2013 Tea Jovanović rated it really liked it

Shelves: editor-of-serbian-edition

One of my favourite picks for Serbian market... Good book, good story that deserves to be read for years and years... I'm sorry to see that none of my Goodreads friends has read it yet... :( But you can always change that... Published by Narodna knjiga - Alfa, 10 years ago... Let say for those who liked THE LIGHT BETWEEN OCEANS... ...more

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Apr 04, 2012 Mathew rated it it was amazing

150 pages in, I'm really enjoying Easter Island. It has a patient, quiet narrative and masterful grasp of subject matter (botany, taxonomy, evolution and science in general) that is unassailable and reminiscent of Sacred Hunger. It also maintains an excellent balance and synergy between the parallel narratives of Elsa and Greer. It always seems a danger, to me, in this construct that one storyline will become dominant or just more interesting than the other. But so far, alternating, I always fin ...more

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Nov 07, 2010 Lauren rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book absolutely delighted me. I went into it with no expectations - it was a random selection from the library - and I finished it a little blown away. I have a feeling this is what The Conquest by Yxta Maya Murray wanted to be - a fictional novel that wraps science and fact into its tale - but where The Conquest stumbled, Easter Island soars. The characters are flawed and not entirely likable, the plot comfortable and not especially surprising, and the ending is not tied up in a little bow ...more

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Aug 25, 2007 Candice rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: Ellen, Barbara (maybe)

This is my kind of book! I love it when two or more stories come together like this. Easter Island is the story of two women who went to the island and did research. But the two women's stories are 60 years apart. There is also a small thread of a German World War I naval squadron present in the book.

Elsa Beazley arrives at Easter Island in 1916 with her new husband and her mentally handicapped sister. Her story was inspired by the true story of Katherine Scoresby Routledge and her husband. Elsa ...more

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Jul 15, 2018 Bandit rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Every so often it’s good to wander off into a novel and completely check out from reality. Actually, it’s good all the time, but it isn’t easy to find a book that good, that immersive, that well written. Well, this is one of those books. Found randomly and selected due to my fascination with the most remote island on earth, the navel of the world, Easter Island. Tough place to visit, even with all the modern travel conveniences, even less so back in the day, one of the narratives is set in the e Every so often it’s good to wander off into a novel and completely check out from reality. Actually, it’s good all the time, but it isn’t easy to find a book that good, that immersive, that well written. Well, this is one of those books. Found randomly and selected due to my fascination with the most remote island on earth, the navel of the world, Easter Island. Tough place to visit, even with all the modern travel conveniences, even less so back in the day, one of the narratives is set in the early 1910s and then the journey took a year. The other narrative is set in 1973, when planes have shortened the travel time considerably, but it’s still a while. Then again a destination that singular seems to almost require extraordinary measures to get to. For dedicated armchair travelers such as myself it’s a Kindle download away. And poof, you’re there. Easter Island. A place of mystery. I knew a fair amount about the place from previous reading and tv, but this was definitely the most definitive sort of trip, educational and immersive. The author has done her research, using actual accounts from various visitors over the centuries, real historical personage on note, to present a well rounded look at a microcosm in various evolutionary stages, from booming civilization to destitute starving survivors. In fact, the 1973’s storyline protagonist Greer comes up with a terrific theory as to how and why that came to be. Her chronological predecessor, Elsa, is more about studying the mysterious writings known as rongorongo. Both women are brought to the island due to regrettable, wretched really, personal circumstances, both in different ways deceived by their spouses, on the island both of them find a form of mental clarity and solace, albeit it not in the same measure. In fact Elsa’ story is much more tragic, she’s stuck with a mentally challenged sister (a genuinely loathsome girl irrespective of her condition) and determined to take care of her, even if it results in making devastating personal choices. Some 60 years later Greer has considerably more options and yet once again there’s the motif of an older man and a marriage fraught with dishonestly and disappointment. Nevertheless hers is certainly the more uplifting of the two narratives, which is probably why the author gives it a more rounded arc and ends the book with it. The spit narrative thing, in fact, was the only challenging thing about this reading experience and only to the extent that each storyline was so completely engaging that it was difficult to switch gears from one to the other. I might have even preferred it as two separate books, although of course they do complement each other. This actually read slower than the page count suggested, because I believe it commanded a certain almost languorous approach, the writing required being luxuriated in. In case you haven’t figured it out by now…I loved this book. It was exactly as good of a novel as its destination deserves and a lovely read. Not just a terrific work of historical fiction. A terrific work of fiction. Mauruuru. ...more

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Feb 05, 2012 Toni rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction, multi-cultural, easter-island

The name Easter Island evokes a sense of mystery and romanticism. The book Easter Island delivers on both accounts.

Begin with an oceanic island fifteen hundred miles from any other landmass, one that had taken thousands of years for plant life to reach its shores and much longer before human life managed to land there. Add in two women, separated by sixty years as their parallel stories are told, each brought to Easter Island - one an Englishwoman who accompanies her anthropologist husband and ...more

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Nov 27, 2019 John rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

A beautifully written and genuinely fascinating novel that loosely interweaves two stories, set in different time periods, of women scientists coming to Easter Island, one of the most remote spots on the planet, and there managing to overcome the sexist prejudices of their day and establish themselves as independent individuals. While following their stories, we pick up along the way lots of juicy bits of information about sciences like botany, paleobotany, linguistics (did you know that Easter A beautifully written and genuinely fascinating novel that loosely interweaves two stories, set in different time periods, of women scientists coming to Easter Island, one of the most remote spots on the planet, and there managing to overcome the sexist prejudices of their day and establish themselves as independent individuals. While following their stories, we pick up along the way lots of juicy bits of information about sciences like botany, paleobotany, linguistics (did you know that Easter Island was one of only five locales where humanity invented written language, the others being China, Mesopotamia, Egypt and Mexico?), palynology (the study of small particles in nature, in this instance of pollen) and biogeography, not to mention dollops of science history and a plausible explanation of one of history's great mysteries. I've probably missed a few of the sciences the narrative touches on.

The first story is that of Elsa Beazley, recently married to a much older husband because it's the only way she can think of to protect her intellectually challenged younger sister from the attentions of the eugenicists, then enjoying a political vogue in the UK. Easter Island seems the perfect refuge for Elsa, a place where she can study her beloved botany -- although quite soon she becomes absorbed instead in studying rongorongo, the untranslated written relics of the long-ago Easter islanders. Thanks to an elderly leper who remembers something of the old days, she in fact makes some headway in translating the pictographic inscriptions.

The other tale, interwined in the narrative with Elsa's, is that of palynologist Greer Farraday, who comes to the island still reeling not so much from the death of her famed-palynologist husband eight months ago as from the knowledge that he stole from her the most important scientific work she's done to date, claiming it as his own, and later was disgraced on the international stage for having falsified some epochal results. Greer is interested in establishing the past botany of Easter Island, in particular as to how it might relate to the island's environmental denudation and the consequent collapse of its civilization. This gives her, too, reason to focus on the moai, the famous Easter Island statues: why did the descendants of the people who'd put so much societal endeavor into creating the statues, transporting them from their quarry and erecting them along the coast so determinedly cast them down?

There's really a third tale here, the tale of the doomed final voyage of Graf von Spee's fleet as it fled the Allies after the outbreak of World War One. While Elsa's story is loosely based on that of a genuine scientific expedition to the island at about that time and Greer's story is a fiction, albeit a fiction moored in real-life scientific research, the voyage of the doomed fleet is a matter of historical record. The author manages to hook the actuality up with Elsa's story, although this was the one time while reading the novel that I rolled my eyes a bit.

Vanderbes indulges in the occasional injoke. The one that really made me grin appreciatively concerned Greer's postgrad galpal at the University of Wisconsin, Jo Banks. The name didn't ring a bell at all for me until, toward the novel's end, it's somewhat selfconsciously revealed that Jo's full name is actually Josephine -- a tip of the hat to that doyen of naturalists, Joseph Banks.

Venderbes's writing is quite dense, and not conducive to skimming. This, combined with her attention to detail, means the book can move quite slowly, especially in its earlier parts -- it's a gripping page turner, or at least I found it so, but the pages don't turn all that quickly. She's also among the relatively few modern writers I've come across recently who can offer a narrative in the present tense (the whole of Elsa's story) without making a complete hash of the past tenses within that narrative. It may not seem like much to you, but to me it was a delight not to be wincing every other paragraph at some new grammatical blunder.

In the very real sense that it's fiction about science and scientific discovery, Easter Island is science fiction of a high order, although no one would ever think of it in terms of that genre -- in the same way that most readers of The Handmaid's Tale don't think of it as science fiction, even though it manifestly is.

Take two very moving tales of self-discovery, add the thrill of scientific discovery plus oodles of intriguing nuggets of science, and then write it all beautifully to form an absorbing narrative. That's the task Vanderbes set herself, and by golly did she succeed. ...more

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Nov 27, 2013 Ron Charles rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

It's comforting to imagine that aliens placed those inscrutable statues on Easter Island. Such a theory protects us from the more haunting implications about human nature. The tiny island, 2,300 miles west of Chile, was settled around 400 A.D. Its early inhabitants - with or without extraterrestrial assistance - carved more than 600 giant faces from volcanic rock and then dragged them to the shore. Some weigh almost 90 tons.

In her gorgeous debut novel, "Easter Island," Jennifer Vanderbes has att ...more

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Jan 17, 2012 Cherie rated it really liked it

I enjoyed reading this historical fiction. It is becomming my favorite genera, and with stories like this one it makes it totally worth my time.

This story was written with three different sub stories involved. All of them converging on Easter Island on two different time lines. One story is about Elsa Beasley, her husband Edward and her sister Alice. Alice is what we call today a special needs individual. I could not exactly say what was wrong with her, but she was a high matenance charge. The ...more

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Jun 10, 2010 Heather rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Oh my what can I say about this book, except I seriously don't recommend it. Although it presents very interesting history and facts of Easter Island I would have been better off reading Wikipeadia. If you want to read about every scientific plant species grown on the island since it's volanic conception, go ahead and be my guest.

I kept waiting for the three separate stories to blend and make a wonderful marriage somewhere along the way, but geez by the last couple chapters I kept looking back ...more

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Jul 26, 2011 Kerith rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction

Easter Island is one of those mysterious places that I've always found fascinating, likely because of the sheer distance away that it is. A novel like this merely whets my appetite. The author moves between the two stories, each of a woman who travels to Easter Island after a huge change in life -- Elsa Beazley after her marriage of convenience in the beginning of the 20th century and Greer Farraday decades later in the 70s, after the death of her husband. As each finds her place and true callin ...more

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Mar 05, 2012 Bettie rated it liked it

Shelves: published-2003, paper-read, hardback, historical-fiction, wwi, plague-disease, women, debut, seven-seas, environmental-issues

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Apr 22, 2013 Tiana Harris rated it did not like it

Shelves: fiction, book-club-reads

This book read too much like a textbook, so I skimmed through quite a bit of it. The only thing that kept me reading was to find out the answers to the few mysteries in the book, and then was quite disappointed at the vague answers that were revealed. I don't like it when authors leave endings up to the readers to figure out. Give me a definite ending, let the characters in the book actually find the answers to the questions asked throughout the book! I also hate when the theory of evolution is ...more

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Mar 16, 2010 Trish rated it it was amazing

Shelves: fiction

I read this years ago, when it came out in 2003. It became one of those books that I will never forget, and periodically I look to see whether the author has managed to sneak anoather title out while I wasn't looking. (She hasn't until this year, when in August 2010, Scribner is publishing Strangers at the Feast, which has already garnered several five-star ratings.)

This particular book struck such a chord because it was about a graduate student trying to make headway with her research and disc ...more

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Aug 05, 2019 Annette rated it liked it

I was looking forward to reading about Easter Island, about its people and monumental statues.

However, the style of writing is very descriptive. If you hatched out those descriptions, there wouldn’t be much to the story line.

Elsa with her husband and sister arrive at the Easter Island at 40% through the story.

Half way thorough the story, it is revealed what Elsa finds on the island and it becomes her project. “Elsa needs something on her own. She wants to secure a balance between them (her and h ...more

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May 16, 2019 Alismcg rated it liked it

Easter Island’s another read that haunts me a bit after closing it. So tragic.

Deforestation hits home for me, draws me in to the island thread BIG time. I must confess, I knew absolutely nothing about the ‘piece’ of naval history (WWI) around which two of the three threads were set in their telling. And the history always pulls on me. The third thread re. palynology 😂 way way out of my league. I do not believe I have ever read another book on studies on spores. So it really stirred an interest. ...more

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Oct 21, 2019 Corinne Edwards rated it really liked it

Shelves: on-the-water, marriage, island-living, science, strong-female-characters, tbrdrawer19, historical-fiction, fiction, botany, 2019

4.5 stars

Two capable and curious women arrive on Easter Island in very different circumstances. In 1913, Elsa lands on its barren shores in a boat with her new husband and sister. In the early 1970s, Greer, a botanist with her PhD focused on ancient pollen, has come to Easter Island to study its early ecological story. What these two women learn about this rugged, isolated land and what they learn about themselves, will tell a remarkable story of trust gained and lost, of what we dream of but th ...more

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Apr 13, 2018 Katie rated it it was amazing

Shelves: 2018, 2018-krkm-bookclub

In 1913, Elsa Pendleton's father has recently died, leaving Elsa and her mentally delayed sister, Alice, in a dire financial situation. With The Feeble Minded Control Bill threatening Alice's future, Elsa makes a quick decision and agrees to marry her father's former colleague, Dr. Edward Beazley, who is thirty years older than she and not exactly the man of her dreams. And so, fleeing painful memories and a bleak future, Elsa, her new husband, Edward, and her sister, Alice, travel to Easter Isl ...more

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Dec 21, 2020 Alexandra Alexandridou rated it it was amazing

An amazing book!
This one should become famous!
Vanderbes has collected unique information about the Easter Island and created her characters by that. It combines history of the island from the first residents till now, everything that is known so far, knowledge of the plant population that existed there and how it affected the life of the people. The situation that was going on at universities with women students and women scientists, romance and many more. Her writing style is beautiful and it ...more

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Jun 18, 2017 Diane rated it liked it

Shelves: women, fiction

Elsa Beazley came to Easter Island in 1913 and in the 1970’s Greer Farraday comes to Easter Island. Both come with a research agenda. I was slow to like this book, but it is a good story and by the end I was enthralled by the way the author overlaps the stories and uses the island’s famous secrets to tell how women make decisions.

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Mar 30, 2019 Jodi Lofchy rated it really liked it

Love this book- not just because I read it while visiting Easter island- but because it was filled with strong and interesting women characters plus I learned a lot about a unique and rich culture rife with mysteries still unexplained.

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Jul 24, 2011 Carolyn rated it it was amazing

Shelves: rereading, favorites

I first read this book in 2003 and enjoyed it very much. It was destroyed along with many other books in a flood and was delighted that I was able to download it from Kindle. Prior to my first reading I had spent an all too short a time on the incredible and remote Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and wondered if that visit influenced my high rating for the book. The answer is definitely No.

This book may not be for everyone. It has much scientific research and history interwoven with the work, trials a I first read this book in 2003 and enjoyed it very much. It was destroyed along with many other books in a flood and was delighted that I was able to download it from Kindle. Prior to my first reading I had spent an all too short a time on the incredible and remote Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and wondered if that visit influenced my high rating for the book. The answer is definitely No.

This book may not be for everyone. It has much scientific research and history interwoven with the work, trials and tribulations of two remarkable women attempting to solve the mysteries of Easter Island. One is Elsa who has married an older anthropologist. It is a marriage of convenience as her younger sister has mental and emotional problems and Elsa has assumed the duty of protecting her. They leave England in 1913 on a long perilous sea voyage where her husband plans to study the colossal moai statues, their meaning and why they were knocked down. Once there Elsa learns the native language and attempts to interpret the old pictograph writing. She learns much of the Island history through speaking with older natives. She also watches her marriage disintegrate. Her relationship with her younger sister is in shambles. They do not know that WW1 has broken out and a German naval fleet is on the run across the Pacific trying to hide from the British and French ships in pursuit.

60 years later Dr. Greer Farraday, an American botanist arrives hoping to discover why tree covering and other wild vegetation barely exists on this tropical island, unlike the dense jungle like covering on other islands. She had been married to a brilliant scientist who plagiarized her research resulting in her doctorate thesis being initially turned down as she was blamed for copying him. The marriage fell apart and he died. She does painstaking work on the island. There is also a small group of other scientists and a native woman who befriends her. One scientist is still trying to solve the mystery of the ancient writing while an architect is attempting to find a way to set the giant statues upright once more.

The past connects in a startling way enabling Greer to discover the reason for the lack of trees and how the heavy statues were transported from a distant quarry.

A remarkable book, heavy in research and with a vivid description of Easter Island. The characters are flawed but well developed and believable in both eras. Being dedicated to their work there is little room for love and romantic connections. I love a book which transports me to remote, exotic places and invests me in the lives of its characters. ...more

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Nov 06, 2016 Robin rated it really liked it

Shelves: adventure, mystery, history-world, historical-fiction

The debut novel of Jennifer Vanderbes, Easter Island is a tale of two women from two different eras, both of who move to Easter Island to find refuge from their pasts. Both women are curious and intelligent, and both experience betrayal and loss as well as true friendship and love. Each woman becomes passionate about her particular scientific research.

Though the details of the women’s lives, told in tandem, are radically different, both must adjust to the culture of island life in their respect The debut novel of Jennifer Vanderbes, Easter Island is a tale of two women from two different eras, both of who move to Easter Island to find refuge from their pasts. Both women are curious and intelligent, and both experience betrayal and loss as well as true friendship and love. Each woman becomes passionate about her particular scientific research.

Though the details of the women’s lives, told in tandem, are radically different, both must adjust to the culture of island life in their respective eras and find their niches. Their personal histories are linked through an odd and historically correct third story: the visitation of Easter Island by German Admiral von Spee’s battleship fleet shortly before its defeat at the Falkland Islands during WWI.

Elsa comes to Easter Island from London in 1913 with her new and much older husband Edward and her sister Alice, who exhibits both mental illness and behavioral problems due to an undisciplined upbringing. Their father’s untimely death brought Elsa to the realization that though they had lived in luxury, her father owed most of his estate in debts. Edward, her father’s anthropologist colleague, offered marriage to Elsa and caretaking for her sister, and a chance to start a new life.

Greer comes to Easter Island in the 1970s after the untimely death of her professor husband. Although a qualified botanist, her much older botanist husband’s reputation had cast a shadow over her own research. Work on a remote island gives her the chance to study on her own, prove her scientific worth, and come to terms with some disturbing aspects of her husband’s domination. Meanwhile, she develops bonds with the native community as well as other researchers.

The island itself is much like a character. Its history and mythology, and the Rapa Nui community and social structure in both eras are key the plot. The mystery of the moai, how they were made and transported, and when and why they were toppled, is explored. (Note: in the years since the 1970s, many of the moai have been restored to their upright positions.) Many true historical facts are revealed.

Readers who like historical fiction and/or are fascinated by Easter Island and its moai will like reading this book. It will be particularly appealing, I think, to women who have survived and thrived in male-dominated professions. People who like the idea of a murderless mystery that spans generations and those interested in science throughout the ages might also enjoy reading it.
...more

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Jan 21, 2014 Virpi rated it it was ok

Well, I had high hopes for this book: it all sounded so intriguing. I've always been interested in novels that mix facts with fiction - it's a facsinating way of learning new things. But, I must say, this book was a disappointment. The style of writing wasn't very gripping and for the longest time I just kept expecting the story to become interesting at some point. In the end, the two stories - Elsa's and Greer's - were very loosely - too loosely - knit together. And the whole story of the Germa ...more

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Dec 29, 2008 Maya rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-2008

Yet another book about two sisters? What is with me! Strangely, this book has been sitting on my shelf unread since I bought it when it was originally published; yet I suddenly felt moved to pick it up and read it. The unconscious drive to sisterhood yet again.

I'm sorry it took me so long, as this was a carefully crafted story; if nothing else, the research that went into the writing of this novel is to be admired. The story moves back and forth between two female protagonists sixty years apart. ...more

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Jun 12, 2015 Abby Vegas rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This is one book that I didn't want to put down. Told as parallel tales (one in the distant past, another more contemporary), Easter Island is a compelling and suspenseful novel. The story has so many facets to it - courage, feminism, family, anthropology, botany... I don't know how Jennifer Vanderbes managed to tie it all together but she did a fantastic job. This is a stay-up-all-night-to-finish-it book. ...more

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Jun 23, 2013 Jane rated it it was amazing

I loved this novel. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in historical fiction, botany, Rapa Nui (Easter Island) and its mysteries, naval battles in World War I, and/or Darwin. It is a wonderful book!

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Sep 05, 2008 Jana Bouc rated it it was amazing

Recommends it for: everyone

Fabulous book that combines great characters, science, history, psychology, mystery. A wonderful read!

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Mar 05, 2012 Stephen Kiernan rated it it was amazing

Brilliant, vivid, compelling. As skillful with narrative lines as Stegner's Angle of Repose. ...more

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Jul 22, 2017 Becky rated it it was amazing

I chose this book because I'm interested old-timey anthropology, women science-ing, sea voyages, and the folklore of the South Pacific - and I got all that in Easter Island. What I didn't expect was to be touched. I actually cried, not because anything tragic happened, but because this was so perfect. Vanderbes's writing was dynamic and evocative and beautiful, which was a lovely complement to the academic rigor and technical diction with which Greer and Elsa tackled their work. I also appreciat I chose this book because I'm interested old-timey anthropology, women science-ing, sea voyages, and the folklore of the South Pacific - and I got all that in Easter Island. What I didn't expect was to be touched. I actually cried, not because anything tragic happened, but because this was so perfect. Vanderbes's writing was dynamic and evocative and beautiful, which was a lovely complement to the academic rigor and technical diction with which Greer and Elsa tackled their work. I also appreciated the author's note in which we learned what was factual in this fictional book. I even purchased Katherine Routledge's Mystery of Easter Island on which Elsa's story was based, that's how interested Vanderbes made me in Easter Island.

However, I found that Greer's story intrigued me much more than Elsa's, even though Elsa's was closer to my normal time period and subject matter of choice. Something about her got under my skin, the way she thought of her sister as both a burden and a boon, her alternate gratitude and grovelling toward Edward, for some reason it was unpleasant to read about that. I was much more compelled by Greer's story, her friends, her professional struggles, the betrayal of her husband, the relationships she forms on Rapa Nui. Most of all, though, was her passion for her work, her love and appreciation for nature coupled with her steely determination and intellectual acumen were a pleasure to read. (Much of my love for this book may be rooted in my own desire to be a jet-setting academic on a solo expedition to a far off land.). By contrast, Elsa began her work with the rongorongo for something to do, and Edward's exploration of the moai seems more a result of mid-life crisis than a spirited desire for an answer to that inquiry - and that shows in their thoughts and dialogue about their studies. Valid characterization, to be sure, but not as enjoyable to sit through.

The side characters, Mahina, Greer's fellow researchers, Jo, Vicente, were well-developed and a pleasure to read about.

Unlike some reviewers, I was pleasantly surprised and proud of Vanderbes for NOT shoehorning in a direct collision of the 1913 and 1973 stories. If something like Greer discovering Elsa's journal or Vicente finding the tablets in Germany had occurred, it would have lessened the novel for me. There was beauty, grace, nuance in Greer being given the fossilized shell from Alice's necklace to help her discovery about the palms without realizing it was from the lost English expedition, that Luka knew them. Also, it would have torpedoed what I consider to be the main theme, moving on when you don't have everything, when things aren't perfect, appreciating what is rather than mourning what isn't. Greer was able to find the key to the palynology and history of the island despite grief over her failed marriage. Vicente developed a new passionate interest, in the biography of Von Spee; his new academic passion coming directly from the disappointment of failing to find the kohua and translate the pictographs. Even a bit character, like Burke-Jones, finds in the inability to replicate the raising of a moai closure on his wife's death and the motivation to leave for India. Wonderful things can come from the imperfect. This is going to sound so snobby, but I think a certain degree of literary taste is needed to fully appreciate this book. And, no, the botany information is neither dull nor too difficult to understand.

All in all, this is a very romantic book about science, and a very scientific book about beauty, in life and in love. I haven't read something this moving in a while, and I even feel I learned a fair bit about botany and Easter Island. I have already ordered both another book by Vanderbes and The Mystery of Easter Island, if that tells you how happy this book made me. If anyone has made it this far in my review (say hi if so!), please, please give yourself the gift of reading this. ...more

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About Jennifer Vanderbes

Jennifer Vanderbes

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Jennifer Vanderbes received her B.A. in English Literature from Yale and her M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Her first novel, Easter Island, was named a "best book of 2003" by the Washington Post and Christian Science Monitor and was translated into 16 languages. Her second novel, Strangers at the Feast, was called "a thriller that also raises
large and haunting question ...more