The Undiscovered Island
Darrell Kastin
2009, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth
410 pages
IT’S PERHAPS not the Latin American trajectory that we are used to, but there is a blending of the Latin and the American that certainly makes The Undiscovered Island of interest to us. Author Darrell Kastin traces his roots to the Azores and he has used the Portuguese islands as the setting for many of his short stories. There is growing interest in the Portuguese-American experience, and The Undiscovered Island will certainly nurture that interest, paying as it does respect to the Azorean tradition and cultural heritage. The book tells the tale of Julia Castro travelling from California to the family’s ancestral home on the mid-Atlantic islands in search of her father. The author paints a picture of mysterious lands where magical tales abound and where dreams lie just beyond the misty horizon. There is an Iberian magical realism to this work that brings together the best of the Americas and Europe. – GJ
