Customer Reviews

The Reef Girl

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Zane Grey's last novel, rejected by his publisher at his death as "too daring"--a Polynesian tale as odd in its way as the Somerset Maugham of The Moon and Sixpence trying his hand at West of the Pecos. Donald Perth, a writer, comes to Tahiti with fiancée Winifred and her mother. One hot night Winifred strips to the moonlit buff and cries to Donald, "Take me, take me!"--two words not to be found elsewhere in Grey from the Tonto Rim to the U.P. Trail. But Donald holds back, thinking Winifred's only jealous of Faaone, that ravishing half-white half-native daughter of Englishman Bennet-Stokes. Then a native tells him he's being cuckolded and Don finds Winifred flagrante delicto with a big native stud--whom he harpoons to death! Hiding out, Don at last joins Faaone, whom he makes pregnante rapidimento. But incestuous Bennet-Stokes wants his daughter Faaone for his own bedmate and, to stem her father's revenge on Don, she beds down Dad--and, during his drunken stupor, shoots him up with a needle full of liquid drained from a leper's sores. Leprosy!--damnably Maughamesque. And then, my God, Don's first novel--about Faaone--smashes all barriers back in the States. So he tries to run off with her. But as their boat pulls out of Papeete harbor, she throws off her clothes and dives overboard. Don cries, "Let the publishers come to me!" and dives after her. And waftings of frangipani cover the frayed loose ends.

The Reef Girl is an exciting daring tale from one of America's great writers. The characters are believable, the setting is authentic, and the romance/adventure is fun and dramatic. Some of the dialogue is dated but the feeling is still there, and I can't help but think that Zane's wife Dolly, being an English major, had a lot of do with editing and building the vocabulary past a standard western story. It is well worth buying and reading. Being an islander (Saipan), I enjoyed it and wholeheartedly passed it on to prolific, but precise fellow readers. Well done Zane, wherever you are!