Jim’s Reviews > Islandia > Status Update

The intelligence and energy of many men and women for long years had been directed toward the development of a way of living in which all had work to do but were never under pressure and all had leisure. The extent of spring planting, the amount of wood to be cut, the hours of labor needed on each thing, had all been worked out.

There was a dream that continued endlessly, of dark places, of endless talk and of questions, of half-wakings, to find it night, of problems always on the point of solution and never solved, of Nattana weaving in and out, now a dark shadowed figure, now a vivid one, burning, painful, and too sweet, and of a knocking, and of a long night and day not yet come....

While those they loved fell everywhere.
Although unhoping of relief,
They held the fort with steadfast care
And yielded neither to despair
Nor to the lassitude of grief.

All the Dorns were in that baby! Of course I know there might have been another one, but that was the precious one. It was a good baby and he knew it. I was in that baby, John, and my great-grandfather, who drove out the settlers, and the Dorn who wasn't afraid of firearms although he had never seen them before—and my great-uncle, and my brother. He saved us all for hundreds of years.