Allison Amend's Enchanted Islands is based on the life of Frances Conway, who lived with her husband, Ainslie, on the Galápagos Islands for several stretches in the 1930s and '40s. Aside from her memoirs, which reveal only the day-to-day mechanics of her life, little is known about her. In Amend's imaginative, richly detailed novel, Frances comes from a large, poor family of Polish Jewish immigrants in Duluth, Minn., where her lifelong friendship with a girl named Rosalie begins. The girls are in many ways opposites: Rosalie is from a relatively well-off family of better-established German immigrants; she is coddled, sexually precocious and selfish.
In adulthood, Rosalie marries a wealthy man and has a mansion filled with sweet children. Frances has recently married the tall, handsome, charismatic Ainslie Conway, but it is an arrangement orchestrated by Naval Intelligence, their shared employer. Ainslie is being sent to the Galápagos to keep an eye on suspected German spies, and Franny is part of his cover. "You're not allowed to read this--I'm not even really allowed to write it," begins Enchanted Islands, Franny's fictional third memoir.
The narrative is colorful and sensually bursting. These details are engrossing and lush, while the realities of World War II are recalled in dreamier terms. Amend offers strong, nuanced characters and a potent backdrop. Her prose is lovely without being overbearing, and her dialogue is impeccable, effortlessly evoking the characters' lovable eccentricities and less lovable faults. With a wide-ranging, adventuresome plot and a humbly engaging protagonist, Enchanted Islands is a gorgeous piece of historical fiction. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia