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 Lonely Island A True and Fictional Tragical Historical yet Comical Account Of the Myriad Mysteries and Enigmas Of Easter Island First chapter of Lonely Island Last chapter of Lonely Island inspired by Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth Read the entire novel Lonely Island Lonely Island is another first-person narration, this time from fifteen-year-old Toromiru who wants to tell a more real and truthful story than has been told so far about the mysteries of Easter Island. Toromiru's brother and sister are tour guides on the island and Toromiru is the beneficiary of two San Franciscans who visited Easter Island and fell in love with Toromiru's candor. This couple, the Joneses, provide Toromiru with books and other research materials on this most remote of inhabited islands. A great number of people on the planet already have heard about and seen photos of the gigantic statues, the moai of Easter Island that have fascinated the world ever since the island was first sighted by a Dutch ship in 1722. How these original people that the Dutch found there—Polynesians? American Indians?—reached this island more than 2000 miles from ANYWHERE and how these people carved the nearly 1000 moai, how they transported the moai from the volcano quarry to every corner of the island, how they raised the moai onto their huge, high, stone platforms, and how in this miraculous world they managed to top many of the moai with a red stone topknot weighing many tons... well, these are questions that staggered the imaginations not only of the first Dutch visitors but of all of us who have heard about or visited the island ever since. Legends along with distortions along with outright lies by lay traveler and scientists alike add to the mystery and fascination. That is what drives Toromiru to tell this true and honest story of the island in a voice and dialect that is charming in its simple English, and often quite funny. The language is influenced by not only the Polynesian and Spanish that are Toromiru's native languages, but also by the archaic English that Toromiru has learned through reading the earliest accounts of the island, the English of Captain Cook and William Wales and those funny, mean Forster father and son. For Toromiru, the most important aspects of the island are the people, the individuals in the legends handed down through the generations of Toromiru's people, also those who are written about by visitors to the island through the centuries. This book is Toromiru's compilation of the best of those stories. Toromiru's last chapter ties together the ravages to the island made by its people—insanely cutting down every last tree on the island to transport the moai—with the ravages being made by people all over the world to the rest of the planet: the insane destruction of our rainforests, the insane destruction of our atmosphere, global warming which will flood all but the highest three mountains of tiny Easter Island. Toromiru knows from the island's tragic history what will happen:
Illustrated by my own photos along with artwork, maps, charts and photographs from centuries of scholarship, this book of 293 pages is at last an accessible introduction to perhaps the most mind-blowing 63 square miles in the world. First chapter of Lonely Island Last chapter of Lonely Island inspired by Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth Read the entire novel Lonely Island Bibliography of Lonely Island
Copyright © 2008 Robert Locke, rev. 2015 |
