The Undiscovered Island - 9781933227238

Fiction. Alarmed by her father Sebastiao's unexplained disappearance, Julia Castro travels from California to the family's ancestral home in the Azores and finds the mid-Atlantic islands abuzz with tales of ghost ships, seductive sirens and witchcraft. The mystery deepens when a drowned man's body is discovered on a mountainside and an unknown island emerges from the sea. As she pursues the search for her father, Julia gradually succumbs to the bewitching allure of the Azores--and to Nicolau, a fellow musician--eventually discovering a place where dreams lie just beyond the horizon, shrouded in mist. History, legend, poetry and myth are seamlessly interwoven as the novel explores relationships between personal and cultural identity, fate and self-determination, reality and illusion. The novel is a lyrical evocation of a locale and a people, rendered with wonderful respect for Azorean tradition. "A story of mystery and magic--magical appearances and mysterious disappearances, mysterious women and magical islands--beautifully and lyrically told"--Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austen Book Club. "After Ulysses founded Lisbon as legend has it, he sailed off into forbidden waters and landed on the isle that held the fountain of purgatory as Dante had it. Might this have been the Azores? THE UNDISCOVERED ISLAND could confirm the fact that, as all of Portuguese history, so legendary as it is, comes to a kind of culmination on these isles. Time is of no avail as its end and passage convene in this novel in what is a romp of detective story, epic, and family quest. What a great read!"--Gregory Rabassa, translator of One Hundred Years of Solitude.