Serpent in Paradise

Lost in the surf of the South Pacific lies a speck of volcanic rock. Home to thirty-eight islanders--descendants of the Bounty mutineers--Pitcairn has no cars, no crime, no doctor, and no regular contact with the outside world. For two centuries, "Fletcher Christian's children," whose culture and language are a bizarre blend of Polynesian and eighteenth-century English, have lived out a unique social experiment. Acclaimed British travel writer and journalist Dea Birkett, obsessed like many with the island's image as a secluded Eden and its connection to the mysterious and intriguing Bounty legend, traveled across the Pacific on a cargo ship and became one of the very few outsiders permitted to land on Pitcairn. Although the islanders initially seemed welcoming, they soon wove her into a web of decades-old disputes and thwarted desires. With no means of escape, Birkett's adventure to the other side of nowhere at last became a kind of prison.

Dea Birkett grew up in the south of England and was educated in Edinburgh, London, and the United States. She works as a freelance writer; her articles have appeared in newspapers and magazines throughout Britian and America. She is the author of Spinsters Abroad: Victorian Lady Explorers and Jella: From Lagos to Liverpool—A Woman at Sea in a Man’s World, both of which were published in the United Kingdom. She lives in London.