In 1904, six-year-old Polly Flint is sent by her sea captain father to live with her aunts in a house by the sea on England's northeast coast. Orphaned shortly thereafter, Polly will spend the next eighty years stranded in this quiet corner of the world as the twentieth century rages in the background. Through it all, Polly returns again and again to the story of Robinson Crusoe, who, marooned like her, fends off the madness of isolation with imagination.
"[A] wonderfully old-fashioned novel . . . This post-Victorian charmer is an engrossing delight."
People
"This is the most bookish of books . . . Every time I return to it, I am comforted by its refusal to conform, its wonderful, boisterous bolshiness, and the intelligence with which it demonstrates that we are what we read."
