Chita: A Memory of Last Island - Paperback
Chita: A Memory of Last Island - Paperback
by Lafcadio Hearn (Author)
A woman's life is forever changed by a hurricane on a Gulf Coast island in this "evocative parable of people living the good life on the edge of the abyss" (The Washington Post).
In the mid-nineteenth century, the wealthy find relief from the New Orleans heat on the barrier island of L'Ile Dernière. But when a cataclysmic storm arrives and leaves devastation in its wake, young Chita barely escapes with her life. Presuming that her father, a Creole businessman, has been swept away, she takes refuge on a nearby island where she is adopted by a Spanish family, changing the course of her future. Written during a ten-year stay in New Orleans and inspired by true historical events, Chita was Lafcadio Hearn's first novel. It is filled with rich description, beautiful language, and emotion, and evokes a true sense of the location and the era.Back Jacket
Written during a ten-year stay in New Orleans, Chita was Lafcadio Hearn's first novel. It is filled with beautiful language and emotion, and evokes a true sense of the location and the era.
Images are expertly imbued into the mind by vivid description. In Chita, Hearn paints life on a marshy, eclectic Gulf Coast island in the middle of the nineteenth century.
Chita is a young white girl who is orphaned by a shipwreck and then adopted by a Spanish family on the island. Languages, cultures, and people collide and meld into a nebulous, but distinctive, way of life.
Author Lafcadio Hearn was a man who wrote with perception and flair about the exotic places he was inexplicably drawn to.
Author Biography
Born in Greece to an Irish soldier and a Greek mother, Lafcadio Hearn emigrated to the United States at the age of nineteen. While working as a newspaperman in Cincinnati, Ohio, Hearn married a black woman, which was then illegal, and fled to New Orleans to escape prosecution. Once there, he began to work for the New Orleans Item. During his time in New Orleans, Hearn published several books while continuing his work as a journalist. As a broke newspaper reporter, Hearn was interested in inexpensive meals, so he assembled a collection of Creole recipes, which he later published. Lafcadio Hearnís Creole Cookbook, the first Creole cookbook ever written, reflects the life and customs of New Orleans during the late 1800s. Asked to write the guidebook for the 1884 Cotton Expedition, Hearn agreed, but only if the publisher would also publish his cookbook. Chita: A Memory of Last Island tells the story of a shipwrecked girl adopted by a Spanish family. Their different languages and cultures collide and blend into a unique way of life. Hearn was fascinated by the exotic, the quaint, and the unusual. This lead to his studies of the Far East, and eventually, Hearn moved to Japan, where he hoped to escape the materialism of the Western world. He secured a university teaching position and soon married a Japanese woman, becoming a Japanese citizen in 1895 under the name Yakumo Koizumi. He continued writing and published numerous books describing the life and customs of his new home, including Kwaidan, Ghostly Japan, and Japan: An Attempt at Interpretation .