CBR18 Bingo: Sheep – The doctor and Dore, and later the Wittmers, all come to Floreana hoping to live simpler, more rustic lives, growing their own food and tending to their own animals.
When Friedrich, a German doctor, and his former patient and lover Dore decide to move to an uninhabited Galapagos island in search of a pastoral setting for their self-improvement, they did not know the publicity and violence that would follow.
I had a vague recollection of this bizarre story from hearing about it on a true crime podcast some years ago, so while I knew the outline of the story, this book filled in the blanks about the who, what, where, etc.
This is such a bizarre and striking tale that Kahler doesn’t have to do much but set the story before the reader. She does an excellent job of sketching out these larger-than-life figures and creating the claustrophobic atmosphere on Floreana, where despite having gone to one of the most remote locations they knew, the inhabitants found themselves butting up against each other almost right away. The reader can understand perfectly well why the conflicts took on outsized forms and escalated to the point that they did. I myself got pretty annoyed with Friedrick and the Baroness!
However, I found myself a bit underwhelmed by the length of the book – because it’s so well-researched, about half of the page count ends up being notes and references, which I was not expecting. As such I wished we got more into the everyday details of life on the island, which is somewhat neglected for the conflict between the settlers.
Disclaimer: I received a copy of this book from NetGalley. This is my honest and voluntary review.
