Charles Nordhoff and James Norman Hall have a world-wide reputation for their books of adventure. But those who enjoyed Mutiny on the Bounty will find a different pleasure in reading The High Barbaree. For The High Barbaree is something more than purely an adventure story.
From childhood, Alec Brooke has had a dream of finding the uncharted island in the Pacific known as Turnbull's Island, which was first seen by a Captain Turnbull in 1842. The idea of the the island becomes an obsession with him and he plans to make an expedition to find it. The war robs him of the opportunity, until 1943 the Catalina flying boat of which he is pilot is shot down in a remote part of the Pacific. He realizes he is within a hundred miles of the reputed position of the island, and the wrecked plane is drifting in that direction. From then on, the story provides all the ingredients which Messrs. Nordhoff and Hall's readers will expect, together with a vein of romantic fantasy which borders on magic.
It is a book which it is impossible to put down until it is finished and the shock of the epilogue has brought the reader back to reality, and it is certainly a book which will enhance its authors' reputation in the field of imaginative literature.
—from the dust jacket
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Review by P. Cornelius on Amazon.com
5.0 out of 5 stars James Norman Hall's forgotten masterpiece
Reviewed in the United States on February 28, 2018
Charles Nordhoff is listed as the co-author. But this is James Norman Hall's book. Entirely. It is apparent in everything from the childhood setting in Iowa to the imagery that also appears in other books that Hall had already finished or would write later, including Lost Island and his autobiography, My Island Home. Also conspicuous is a complete change in writing style and tone. The High Barbaree is filled with contemplative narration. Some critics, including Hall himself, saw this as the writer's weakness. It's not. It's what separates this work from his others and makes it, in retrospect, his forgotten masterpiece. Nordhoff was excellent at framing the action in their co-authored books. That is what made their most cinematic friendly books into their most successful, The Mutiny on the Bounty and The Hurricane. But The High Barbaree walks a fine line between the surreality of a dissolving dream and the sure-footedness of a belief in a higher spiritual realm.
The story itself is set during World War II in the South Pacific, in the vast expanse of open ocean amidst the Caroline and Marshall islands. Survivors of a Catalina PBY flying boat are adrift and awaiting rescue. As one day merges into another on the becalmed ocean, the central character, Alec Brooke, remembers a childhood story of a lost island paradise near where their plane has landed in the sea. The High Barbaree is that island. It is a refuge for all those broken by war and disaster. It is a place of memory, of a time when all things were unsullied by machinery, industrial devastation, and war. And it is home. A home we all eventually find if we look hard enough.
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Adapted into a 1947 film starring Van Johnson, June Allyson, Thomas Mitchell, Marilyn Maxwell, and others (see more at the Wikipedia article).
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