Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II by Abbott Kahler

At the height of the Great Depression, Los Angeles oil mogul George Allan Hancock and his crew of Smithsonian scientists came upon a gruesome scene: two bodies, mummified by the searing heat, on the shore of a remote Galápagos island. For the past four years Hancock and other American elites had traveled the South Seas to collect specimens for scientific research. On one trip to the Galápagos, Hancock was surprised to discover an equally exotic group of humans: European exiles who had fled political and economic unrest, hoping to create a utopian paradise. One was so devoted to a life of isolation that he’d had his teeth extracted and replaced with a set of steel dentures.

As Hancock and his fellow American explorers would witness, paradise had turned into chaos. The three sets of exiles—a Berlin doctor and his lover, a traumatized World War I veteran and his young family, and an Austrian baroness with two adoring paramours—were riven by conflict. Petty slights led to angry confrontations. The baroness, wielding a riding crop and pearl-handled revolver, staged physical fights between her two lovers and unabashedly seduced American tourists. The conclusion was deadly: with two exiles missing and two others dead, the survivors hurled accusations of murder.

Using never-before-published archives, Abbott Kahler weaves a chilling, stranger-than-fiction tale worthy of Agatha Christie. Set against the backdrop of the Great Depression and the march to World War II, with a mystery as alluring and curious as the Galápagos itself, Eden Undone explores the universal and timeless desire to seek utopia—and lays bare the human fallibility that, inevitably, renders such a quest doomed.

REVIEWS

“A wild ride through an extraordinary true story, Eden Undone is addictive and astonishing. It combines a forgotten piece of history with the urgency of a murder mystery in the most unlikely setting. It will captivate you.”—Susan Orlean
 
“Abbott Kahler is a master of nonfiction suspense, with a touch of the macabre. Eden Undone reads like a dark and twisted Gilligan’s Island—half wasteland and half paradise, haunted by utopian delusions, mysterious deaths, and madness.”—Debby Applegate
 
“One of my favorite writers has knocked it out of the park yet again. In Eden Undone, Abbott Kahler has created a book as fantastic as the true story she weaves. With taut prose and sublime storytelling, she crafts an atmospheric page-turner, ominous and thought-provoking, with the best last line I’ve read in decades.”—Kate Moore

PRODUCT DETAILS
Trade Paperback
Publisher: Crown
ISBN:  978-0451498656
Pages: 352