IN SEARCH OF PARADISE

This is a dual biography of Nordhoff and Hall and many of the facts of their lives are as colorful as the books they were later to write together. The two men met following the WWI Armistice and sharing a revulsion toward war and civilization, decided to go to the South Seas. Once in Tahiti they tried to write, independently, but only Nordhoff was successful. He was equally successful with a native wife and fathered seven children. Nordhoff was a hard-minded realist while Hall was the romantic. Together they wrote Mutiny on the Bounty, the trilogy which took them five years to complete. And then Nordhoff divorced his native wife (after she was found in bed with his chauffeur) and he began to disintegrate. Hall also came into his share of physical misery and died just before a leg amputation was indicated... Briand studies their work along with their lives for, presumably, their interested following.