Alice, or The Wild Girl

An enchanting story about the unlikely bond between an aging naval commander and the feral child named Alice that he picks up on a deserted island in the South Seas in the mid-nineteenth century, informally adopting her and attempting to re-civilize her while hoping that she might alleviate his loneliness and ennui. Alice takes the reader on a journey in multiple senses of the word, starting out with Melvillian touches in faraway South Pacific locales, then moving on to dry land, with engrossing scenes set in antebellum Virginia, followed by Dickensian narrative segments that play out in a bustling and chaotic frontier town named San Francisco. This masterfully written novel is steeped in cultural and historical period detail, shot through with fascinating thematic threads, and enriched with layered psychological and emotional nuances.