The Splendid Quest

This is a story very much of its time; it was published in 1934, and it seems longer ago than that when considering the sea change in attitudes since then. The story begins with two young Americans, Joe and Charley, setting forth by boat from Seattle to Shanghai to make their fortunes. Joe is a mining engineer; Charley is a doctor. No sooner do they get underway than Joe spots Donna, an American girl traveling with her mother and headed to Shanghai to meet her finance, Keith. Joe falls for Donna and the two keep company, though she makes it clear that she's not available.

When they arrive in Shanghai, they find that Keith is under the spell of Sonia, a beautiful Russian emigre. Donna's mother is adamant that Donna should fight for her show more man, so when Keith is headed off for Vietnam to investigate reports of gold fields there, Donna and her mother show up with a gift for him and find that Sonia has joined him on the ship, and Donna's mother suggests that they all go. A note from Donna to Joe prompts him and Charley to show up, also, so the whole group sets off together. Donna gives Keith his ring back after finding Sonia with him, but agrees not to make a final decision about their relationship until they return to Shanghai.

The travelers, in the care of native boatmen, choose the wrong fork in a river and are soon stuck on an island in the jungle without their boat. They go about their own little game of Survivor, complete with everything from smallpox to gangrene.

I had an easier time accepting the casual racism that litters the text (yellow hordes, savages, little natives, and the like), but I had some trouble with scenes between Donna and her mother, including one in which her mother seems to be saying that Donna's father cheated on her but men are like that and she thought it was worth hanging on to the marriage. When her mother suggests accompanying Keith and Sonia to Vietnam, I wondered what on earth she was thinking, although she's painted as a wise and knowing woman; as events unfold, Donna figures out what she really wants.

Somehow, the author manages to make everyone seem noble in his or her own way, although I'd characterize at least one of them as very badly behaved, indeed, not to mention weak.

I can say that although the end was extremely predictable, the journey there was not entirely what I expected; despite my irritation with the outdated views (oddly, this may be more evident in books from this period than ones written a hundred years earlier, though maybe it's just a reflection on the quality of the writer), I did keep turning the pages and wanting to know what happened next--which is, to me, the litmus test of a book. Plot rules! show less