A power-hungry baroness with two lovers disrupts life on an Eden-like island in the Galápagos
and an isolated community descends into madness and murder—a true story of utopia gone wrong
from New York Times bestselling author Abbott Kahler. “Abbott Kahler’s wickedly gothic tale
confronts an essential truth about those who ditch civilization: Try as we might humans cannot
elude the tyranny of our own nature.”—Hampton Sides author of The Wide Wide Sea “With taut
prose and sublime storytelling Kahler crafts an atmospheric page-turner ominous and
thought-provoking.”—Kate Moore author of The Radium Girls and The Woman They Could Not Silence
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.
