Column: Abbott Kahler's ‘Eden Undone' tells the story of how a nightmare was created on a lonely island

Chicago Tribune

7 hours ago

The parrot's name is Dexter and he is 24 years old and he is punctuating the conversation I am having with his owner, the writer Abbott Kahler, who is on the phone from Long Island, where they spend some weekend time away from a small New York City apartment she shares with her husband and Dexter.
I ask about another island, Floreana, which is roughly 2,000 miles from New York. 'It's hard to get to,' she says. 'It takes two full days. Planes, trains, automobiles, ferries, the whole thing. But to finally see it … To see where my characters walked and slept and lived. There's only about 150 people on Floreana today, and it's still difficult to live there. It gave me a real sense of what it was like almost 100 years ago.'
Floreana is the setting for her latest book, a thrilling, captivating nonfiction 'Eden Undone: A True Story of Sex, Murder, and Utopia at the Dawn of World War II.' It is a mystery tale, a survival story and a lot more, focusing on a small group of people (some of them half nuts to begin with and others driven to madness during the book's 350-some pages) who came to the remote and lonely Galápagos island of Floreana seeking to make and live in a utopia, create new lives.
With the Depression as a backdrop and the coming storm that will be World War II casting shadows, the events and intrigue, deprivation and death on the island provide shocks and surprises on every page.
'These people were fleeing the craziness of Europe but wound up creating a crazy world of their own,' Kahler says.
They were an egomaniacal doctor and philosopher from Berlin who, among other weirdness, had his teeth removed and replaced with steel dentures, and his lover, a woman with multiple sclerosis; a World War I veteran with PTSD and his lover and sickly teenage son; and an Austrian baroness who left a husband in Paris to journey to the island with two young boyfriends with the intention of building, unlike the others, what Kahler calls, 'another Miami Beach,' a spot for American tourists. Her nickname was 'Crazy Panties.'
Add to this crowd packs of wild animals and visiting millionaires, tourists and scientists, and you have a wild stew. And a great book, not Kahler's first but her best.
As Karen Abbott, she made a big splash in literary circles and became a Chicago favorite in 2007 with her first book, 'Sin in the Second City,' the story of our city's most famous madams, the Everleigh Sisters.
Her subsequent books were also polished and popular: 'American Rose,' about Gypsy Rose Lee; 'Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy,' which tells of four female spies during the Civil War; 'The Ghosts of Eden Park,' about one of the most successful, if ill-fated, Prohibition bootleggers. Toss in a fine and inventive 2024 novel, 'Where You End,' and you'll have an admirable bookshelf.
In 2012, she became Abbott Kahler, because, as she says, 'A reader told me that Google had listed 'Karen Abbott' as having died back in 2010. That rather disturbing error prompted me to change my name legally.'
She has been tied to what has become 'Eden Undone' for more than a decade. When she first pitched the story, she was greeted by a short-sighted publisher who said, 'No, you are only known for writing about Americans.'
And so, as she worked on her other books, she also began to collect research materials for this book. Eventually, she found an interested publisher.
'COVID had arrived and it was perfect to really dig in and there was so much available,' she says.
She benefitted from letters, hundreds of photographs, newspaper articles and the memoirs of some of the early settlers, many of which had to be translated from their original German, French, Spanish, Norwegian; the archives of such early island visitors as biologist Waldo Schmitt and millionaire and moviemaker George Allan Hancock, who had filmed some of the island's residents. She was likely the first person to consult the papers donated in 2020 to the University of Southern California by a fellow named Lorenzo DeStefano, a playwright who had hoped to write a screenplay in the 1970s. He had interviewed some of the earliest settlers.
Kahler's ability to marshal all of this material into a propulsive narrative is a stunning accomplishment. Since being published last September, the book has gathered a mountain of praise, but I'll just give you this, from author Susan Orlean, who has called it a 'wild ride through an extraordinary true story … 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.'
Many have been grabbed by the characters and details of the story. Filmmaker Ron Howard was similarly bewitched, though Kahler is not quite sure how he came upon the relatively unknown story.
'A friend in England sent me a newspaper clipping about Ron Howard being in Australia with Jude Law filming a movie called 'Eden,' based on some of the same people and events in my book,' Kahler says.
Now, it is every writer's dream to have their work associated with a high-profile Hollywood movie and its attendant publicity. She unsuccessfully attempted to contact Howard, who directed the film and co-wrote the script with Noah Pink.
Knowing that the film would be screened at the Toronto Film Festival in September last year, Kahler's publisher pushed up her hardcover publication date. But the film's release was delayed by distribution challenges. It opens Friday.
'Of course I plan to see the movie,' says Kahler, telling me that Jude Law plays the man with the steel teeth, which he may or may not have in the film, and that Ana de Armas plays the Baroness, with Sydney Sweeney, Vanessa Kirby and Daniel Brühl also in the cast. 'I love this story so much. I 'know' these people.'
Kahler has been busy with promotional duties for 'Eden Undone,' which will include a Sept. 6 appearance at the Printers Row Lit Fest. She has yet to find the topic for her next nonfiction book, but is working on a second novel and is especially excited by an upcoming article for Vanity Fair, saying, 'This is a story I have wanted to tell for 25 years.'