Review: Some of this book made me cringe, but I couldn't stop reading
Rating: 5 out of 5
Date: 02 9, 2011
I almost stopped reading this book after the first few paragraphs.  Set in a plantation in the Solomon Islands, it is blatantly racist towards the natives and started off with describing a disgusting disease which had infected many of them.  Even the British plantation owner, who was the only white man there, had symptoms of the disease but he still needed to maintain discipline over his black workers who were recruited for five-year stints and paid very low wages.  I cringed at the description of the disease and I cringed at the description of the discipline, but frankly, I couldn't stop reading.Written in 1911, this is a novel about a time and a place.  It is also a story of a romance.  And a story about a young beautiful liberated American woman named Joan who was raised free and wild in Hawaii, taught to captain a ship, handle a rough crew, and resist marital entanglements.  When her ship runs adrift on the plantation owner's property, he naturally falls head over heels in love with her.What follows is nothing short of high adventure and I can well understand the title of this short 190 page novel.  There are worker uprisings, long treks through the jungle, murder, revenge, a duel between two white men and a wild assortment of shady characters.  The story moves fast and gives quite a sordid picture of life in the Solomon Islands at time.  It is a hard life for everybody and yet, as Jack London describes it, is also a life of high adventure as well as a great example of the work of this author.