A tale connect to the mutiny on the Bounty in the Pacific Ocean in 1789, and to incest and sex abuse on the island of Pitcairn now. Its conceptual core is how a small chance thing, the taking of a coconut by Fletcher Christian from William Bligh's stores on the ship, had dramatic ramifications that continue today. The analogy is with chaos theory in science: how a small variation in conditions can result in dynamic transformations elsewhere. This story moves form a simple, random event to its complex connections. The narrative will include mutiny, travel, biography, incest, homosexuality, murder and rape, science and technology, fantasy and selective history, with eight pages of illustrations and integrated maps and line drawings. Sea voyages, most of them extraordinary, will drive the narrative forward: the author's own journey to the remote island of Pitcairn where Fletcher Christian hid to escape punishment; Bligh's navigation to Timor in violent weather, without maps, in small boat, with scant supplies and starving men; the voyage to England with mutineers in chains and their shipwreck...This would not be a "one thing after another" book, rather a continuum where things interr

Author Biography

Diana Souhami is the author of many widely acclaimed books, including SELKIRK'S ISLAND, which won the 2001 Whitbread Biography Award. She has also written plays for radio and television. Previous titles: Wild Girls (Bfmt Oct 05); Selkirk's Island; Gluck; Greta and Cecil; Gertrude and Alice; The Trails of Radclyffe Hall