Midge Raymond’s ‘Floreana’ takes readers to the Galapagos

By Ed Battistella

Floreana is a 67-square-mile island far from the coast of Ecuador in the Galapagos Archipelago. Visited by Charles Darwin in 1835, it is today home to a number of endangered species, including the Galapagos green turtle, Galapagos storm petrels and the Galapagos penguins.

“Floreana” is also the title of Ashland author Midge Raymond’s latest novel, a captivating tale of love, loss and murder with an environmental twist. It is the story of Mallory, a present-day biologist returning to the field after her marriage has failed, and it is the story of Dore, who settled in Floreana in 1929 to recover her health and start a new life. Told in short chapters, the novel alternates between Mallory’s story and Dore’s.

Dore is a German woman with multiple sclerosis who abandons a loveless marriage to run off to the Galapagos with her doctor, Friedrich Ritter. Her hopes for renewed health and love are cut short, however, as Friedrich turns out not to be the man she thought he was. 

Dore perseveres quietly, writing children’s stories that she shares with the teenage son of other settlers, caring for animals and keeping a secret journal.

A self-styled baroness

When a treacherous diva who styles herself as a baroness arrives on the island with a pair of lovers, the lives of Dore, Friedrich and the others are disrupted. The baroness steals supplies, claims the island as her own, and schemes to make Floreana a tourist resort. She’s a perfect villain — the Cruella De Vil of the Galapagos. Dore eventually becomes close to one of the baroness’s companions, but that relationship is cut short when the baroness and the other companion mysteriously disappear.

Flash forward a century. Mallory returns to Floreana and reunites with Gavin, her onetime lover. Gavin’s research team is attempting to build the first human-made nests for the island’s penguins to safeguard their eggs from predatory cats and rats. Mallory struggles to readjust to island life, to her feelings for Gavin and to considerable maternal guilt. Mallory’s life becomes more complicated when an ambitious journalist named Callista Keehn shows up with her cameraman Diego to do a feature on the team’s work. 

A discovery

As she is documenting penguin eggs, Mallory stumbles across Dore’s journals. She keeps them to herself and she persuades the German-speaking Diego to meet with her secretly to translate the entries. But their nocturnal meetings are eventually discovered by Callista and the journals disappear. 

That’s all I’ll say about the plot, other than there are plenty of twists. Along with the central mysteries, there are keen psychological insights into Dore and Mallory. Their narratives are engagingly crafted and readers will enjoy mentally tracing the parallels between the Mallory’s experiences and Dore’s as each discover who she is and what she wants from life.

“Floreana” is a mystery, but it is also a tale of the environment and animals. As Mallory and Dore experience the island, Raymond seamlessly educates us about penguins (Why do they lays eggs in pairs and mate for life?) and raises moral questions (Is it okay to kill cats that prey on penguin eggs?). 

Based on a true story

Midge Raymond’s “Floreana” is stylized, engaging fiction, but it also based on a true story — and true mysteries — of some of the earliest settlers to the island. The real Friedrich Ritter and Dore Strauch settled on the island in 1929, and their new life was covered in the German press.

In 1932, another couple, Heinz and Margret Wittmer, arrived from Germany with their teenage son, Harry. And soon an arrogant and grandiose Austrian woman arrived with her two German lovers, Robert Philippson and Rudolph Lorenz. Eloise Wehrborn de Wagner-Bosquet was a self-proclaimed baroness whose high-handedness created no end of trouble for Friedrich, Dore and the Wittmers. When they complained to the governor of the Galapagos, the baroness ended up seducing him.

Eventually, though, in March of 1934, the baroness and Robert Phillipson mysteriously vanished, never to be seen again. All their possessions were left behind. The baroness’s other lover, Rudolph Lorenz, soon left the island, and he was found dead on the beach of Marchena Island, 100 miles to the north. And later that year, Friedrich Ritter died as well. The cause of death was given as food poisoning from eating chickens. Dore Strauch left the island and, when she returned to Germany, published a 1936 memoir titled “The Devil Comes to Eden.” 

Dore’s neighbor Margret Wittmer also penned an account of her experiences as “Floreana: A Woman’s Pilgrimage to the Galapagos,” published in 1959. Eventually, the Wittmers were the sole remaining settlers and they set up a hotel, which is still there today, managed by their descendants.   

The conflicting memoirs of Dore Strauch and Margret Wittmer provided a point of departure for Raymond and she has now made their story even more compelling.

An accomplished author

“Floreana” is not Raymond’s first novel featuring exotic locales and compelling women. She is the author of “My Last Continent,” another multilayered story, set in the majestic Antarctic. She and John Yunker, with whom she co-founded Ashland Creek Press, coauthored “Devils Island,” a mystery set on a remote island off the coast of Tasmania. Raymond has cemented a place as writer of exotic locales, deep human feeling and compelling stories.

A winner of the Spokane Prize for short fiction, Raymond has taught writing at Boston University, Boston’s Grub Street Writers, Seattle’s Richard Hugo House and San Diego Writers, Ink. Her work has appeared in TriQuarterly, American Literary Review, North American Review, Bellevue Literary Review, the Los Angeles Times magazine, Poets & Writers, and Ashland.news.

Retired Southern Oregon University English professor Edwin Battistella’s latest book, “Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels,” was released by Oxford University Press in March 2020.