Abbott Kahler, formerly writing as Karen Abbott, is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City; American Rose; Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy; The Ghosts of Eden Park; and a novel, Where You End. She is also the host of Remus: The Mad Bootleg King, a podcast about legendary Jazz Age bootlegger George Remus. A native of Philadelphia, she lives in New York City. ... Read more Read less
An incredible true story of murder, romance, and a fateful search for utopia in the
Galápagos–from the New York Times bestselling author of The Ghosts of Eden Park
At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of</p>
Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on
the shore of a remote Galápagos island. For the past four years Hancock and other American elites
had traveled the South Seas to collect specimens for scientific research. On one trip to the
Galápagos, Hancock was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles
who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a utopian paradise. One was so devoted
to a life of isolation that he'd had his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of steel dentures.
As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, paradise had turned into chaos. The
three sets of exiles–a Berlin doctor and his lover, a traumatized World War I veteran and his young
family, and an Austrian baroness with two adoring paramours–were riven by conflict. Petty slights led
to angry confrontations. The baroness, wielding a riding crop and pearl-handled revolver, staged
physical fights between her two lovers and unabashedly seduced American tourists. The conclusion
was deadly: with two exiles missing and two others dead, the survivors hurled accusations of murder.
Using never-before-published archives, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale
worthy of Agatha Christie. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World
War II, with a mystery as alluring and curious as the Galápagos itself, Eden Undone explores the
universal and timeless desire to seek utopia–and lays bare the human fallibility that, inevitably,
renders such a quest doomed.
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