Many of the essays and true stories in this collection can also be found in some of James Norman Hall's other works, specifically, his autobiography and a posthumous collection entitled, The Forgotten One. No matter. The ones already read are well worth reading again. And the heretofore unknown ones are, some of them, spectacular. In particular, there is Hall's melancholy work on nostalgia and travelling back home to the Midwest after sojourning in Tahiti for many years. That story is found in "One of a Kind Journey," in which the layers of sepia tinted remembrances pile upon the reader's imagination--until a devastating ending that reminds us that everyone takes a different journey in life. Some are epic and some are but the passing of years and the movement within a small dwelling on a forgotten street.

Another thing this work illustrates is just how varied a writer was Hall. Not only did he team up with Charles Nordhoff to write memorable pieces of historical fiction, he had an remarkable talent as an essayist and even a critic of literature. Poetry was never far from Hall's literary consciousness. He indulges in his thoughts on Coleridge and Wordsworth and Blake in these pages. He also details his admiration for Conrad. In so doing, he reveals himself to be a Romantic. And that is true not only of his storytelling but his outlook on life. Hall, essentially, remained a nineteenth century man, although he lived until 1951. He hated the automobile and all it symbolized and portended--although he also eagerly sought out adventure in an even newer mode of transportation than the automobile, when he became an aviator during World War I, flying with the Lafayette Escadrille.

The best of these stories and essays, however, describe the South Seas. Hall's observations of his own life on Tahiti are as descriptive and colorful as anything I've read about the men who ventured to this part of the globe. And the stories of the people he encountered are timeless as well as often heartbreaking and comic at the same time. To pick up these pages is to be transported back to the late 1920s and a time when the fear of mechanization was afoot but not yet fully realized. Hall's words are the last gasp of that view of the South Pacific that was forever obliterated with the coming of World War II and the postwar world. ( )