Chita: A Memory of Last Island (Unabridged‪)‬

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a writer, critic and journalist. His novel, Chita: A Memory of Last Island, is about a young girl, Chita, who survives a devastating tropical storm. 

Last Island, a holiday resort in the Gulf of Mexico, is destroyed by the hurricane that kills Chita’s mother and leaves her adrift at sea. Chita is saved and adopted by a Spanish fisherman, Feliu, and his wife, Carmen, a religious woman who perceives the baby as a gift from God. 

The descriptions of nature: the Gulf Coast, the islands, the waterways, and sea are epic, Hearn’s account of the storm and the havoc it wrought are spectacular.