HIDDEN LATITUDES: A Novel [Hardcover]

Alison Anderson (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 31, 1996

When a near shipwreck strands a young couple on an uncharted island in the Pacific, they encounter a mysterious woman who may or may not be the legendary aviator Amelia Earhart but who has been stranded on the remote strip of land for more than forty years. 25,000 first printing.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

A novel that offers a possible solution to the disappearance of Amelia Earhart, Hidden Latitudes finds her as an elderly castaway, stranded for more than 40 years on an unknown island. When a damaged sailboat approaches the island, Earhart considers lighting a signal fire as she has done each time a ship was near, but then she has second thoughts, wondering whether a rescue would still be worth it. As she secretly watches Robin and Lucy repair their boat, she struggles with whether to leave the island that's become her home or re-enter the world from which she came, a place that now seems unknown and dangerous.

From Publishers Weekly

Three months after the publication of Jane Mendelsohn's I Was Amelia Earhart (Forecasts, Mar. 18) comes a second novel about the aviatrix's life after her disappearance in 1937. The similarities are striking. Each imagines Earhart marooned on a Pacific island; each tells her story at least partly in the first person; each presents a narrative composed of discrete vignettes set in lyrical prose. But while Mendelsohn's novel enchants, Anderson's?her first?disappoints. Here, Earhart's story is juxtaposed with the tale of two other characters, modern-day castaways on the island. As the novel opens, an elderly Earhart spots a sailboat approaching. Aboard are Lucy and Robin, who have left their comfortable life as schoolteachers to sail the world?and to try to save their troubled, 10-year marriage. After the boat crashes on a reef, the couple comes ashore; in subsequent days, Earhart watches them from afar and remembers other visitors to the island, such as Japanese soldiers during WWII, and an islander named Kuma, who refused to rescue her from exile. Earhart never reveals herself to Lucy and Robin, though they become aware of the presence of another. When they leave, the aviatrix feels regret, but at peace with her choice of solitude over companionship. Would that she had chosen solitude in this novel as well. Lucy and Robin come across as almost stereotypically selfish suburbanites whose constant bickering and problems (past infidelities, the question of having children) are presented with little depth. Anderson's prose is precise and sensual, with the island richly evoked in a fashion that, unfortunately, her characters are not.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: Scribner (May 31, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684822822
• ISBN-13: 978-0684822822
• Product Dimensions: 7.6 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,807,319 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A beguiling tale of What If, March 17, 2002

By 

Joseph Haschka (Glendale, CA USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: HIDDEN LATITUDES: A Novel (Hardcover)

In 1937, aviatrix Amelia Earhart disappeared with her navigator, Fred Noonan, somewhere in the South Pacific while attempting a circumnavigation of the globe. The mystery of Earhart's fate has captured the public's imagination for decades. Did she perish when her plane hit the water? Was she captured by the Japanese and executed as a spy? Was she abducted by space aliens? Is she living in Idaho with Elvis?

The premise of Alison Anderson's novel HIDDEN LATITUDES, which is set in1979, is that Amelia has survived 42 years as a castaway on a tiny Pacific atoll, the last 40 alone. Then one day, a 35-foot sailboat, the "Stowaway", with husband Robin and wife Lucy aboard, anchors in the island's lagoon, her engine kaput and her hull reef damaged. Might this be Earhart's ride home?

In chapters that alternate between the "voice" of Amelia and those of her might-be rescuers, the author explores the loneliness that derives from complete isolation from the world as compared with that despairing aloneness which grips the partners in a failing marriage. Earhart has become so accustomed to solitary life on her little island that she hesitates to reveal her presence to Robin and Lucy, whose marital difficulties are only exacerbated by their present crisis. At 82, Amelia wonders what would be gained by returning to a world that would regard her as an historical curiosity, soon to become nothing but an aged crony. Being young and not realizing the value of what they have together, Robin and Lucy internally contemplate the possibility of separation once they get back to "civilization".

I liked HIDDEN LATITUDES insofar as the poignancy of Anderson's plot resides almost solely in the Earhart character as she "remembers" for the reader the significant events of her life since she and Fred lost their way, including two near-rescues snatched away early on by cruel Fate. To this extent, Anderson has crafted an imaginatively satisfying "what if" scenario. On the other hand, the Robin and Lucy characters become so caught up in their dysfunctional behavior while struggling to make their boat seaworthy that they approach dangerously close to becoming tiresome. They're so self-absorbed in their own bickering that they fail for too long to follow up on clues that another human is present on this "deserted" island. You want to yell at them, "Snap out of it. Look around you!"

At one point, Amelia sneaks a book from the "Stowaway":

"In my shelter there is a new treasure, a novel. ...I have taken it from them ... but I think if they could ever know the pleasure it will give me they would not mind. Dare I read it over and over, for the pleasure? As it happens I cannot read quickly. I am not used to letters on a page anymore. ... I read aloud, quietly; words and voice struggle together against neglect. Yet I can savor the words and pictures they convey. ... I am like a child, learning to read, learning the world I have forgotten."

Perhaps more than anything else, Earhart yearns for the small things of life like jam, a scissors to cut her hair, a new pair of shorts, needle and thread. And, God bless her, books.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Readable, but confusing and sometimes depressing, November 14, 2001

By 

shirley lieb (Chicago, Illinois United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hidden Latitudes (Paperback)

Throughout the book, I can see what I think that author is getting at. She wants us to look beyond our materialistic world, to look beyond the people we are in the world we know. All a very valid message.

I find her message in the acknowledgement section somewhat confusing, that perhaps this is not Amelia Earhart afterall, that the reader should make up their own minds. If not Amelia Earhart, then why the companion named Fred, the talk of the fame that this woman knew would surround her when she arrived home and the references to the lost Electra.

Lucy and Robin were not terribly heartwarming characters in my opinion. They both seemed quite immature, self centered and shallow and I doubt that in the long term they would be able to hold a relationship together. They probably matured from their experience, but I think they might find being full time parents rather boring and I see each of them drifting into their old lives and habits, leaving the child to almost raising itself.

As to the woman that the author suggests to be Earhart, she has no choice as to the life she has led on this island, though I find it somewhat unlikely that after 40 years rumors from the Japanese and some natives might not have caused someone to come and take another look.

Inspite of the above criticisms, it was a fast read with a rather predictable ending.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars What if Amelia Earhart didn't really die?, September 16, 2003

By 

Peggy Vincent "author and reader" (Oakland, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Hidden Latitudes (Paperback)

Imagine Amelia Earhart stranded on a tropical island, and imagine that 40 yrs later a young couple beaches their sailboat on that same island. That's the premise of Hidden Latitudes. Anderson writes convincingly, alternating between Earhart's voice (and now 70yo doesn't immediately reveal herself to these newcomers) and a 3rd-person narrative of the two sailors, whose marriage was shaky to begin with, and now they've got shipwreck to contend with.
Sounds iffy, right? But set aside your doubts, pick this book up, and read it. Besides being a superb first novel, it's a superb story. You won't be disappointed.