Faery Lands of the South Seas

Returning from the horrors of World War I James Hall and Charles Nordhoff follow a dream to tour the South Pacific. They had a highly successful literary partnership that lasted nearly 30 year and produced several worldwide bestsellers. The authors of the Mutiny on the Bounty trilogy present a travelogue look at French Polynesia in the 1920s. Although non-fiction, it relates the stories and lifestyles of natives, scalawags, and (yes) imperialists in a very readable and highly entertaining style. While both authors provide individual vignettes of life in the high islands and low-island archipelagos, Charles Nordhoff seems to have a stronger sense of storytelling and the word-painting imagery of palm trees, sunsets, and schooners than James Norman Hall. Halls writing, here, is a bit more linear and factual whereas Nordhoffs work is more evocative. Perhaps that is why they were such good collaborators in their Bounty trilogy.