In Search Of Robinson Crusoe

Tim Severin's In Search of Robinson Crusoe is a fascinating melding of literary and bibliographic scholarship and wide-ranging travelogue that seeks out, and discovers, the flesh-and-blood prototypes for Daniel Defoe's famous castaway and his island home. Severin makes a convincing case that Alexander Selkirk, long assumed to be the model for Crusoe, was little more than Defoe's immediate inspiration. In fact, says Severin, Defoe based the setting and many episodes of his novel on gleanings from other contemporary accounts of maroonings (three, in particular). Severin's research takes him first to Selkirk's island, then to the coasts of Nicaragua and Honduras, where he visits the Miskitu Indians (on whose forebears Defoe likely based Crusoe's Man Friday) as well as to several thoroughly obscure Caribbean desert islets. The most intriguing sections of the book are recountings of the adventures of various abandoned seamen, including Pedro Serrano, a 16th-century mariner who maintained he had lived for seven years on a desolate cay devoid of fresh water. This is an audacious and thrilling book. --H. O'Billovich