Eden Undone

“In describing Abbott Kahler’s wickedly gothic tale, one is tempted to reach for “In describing Abbott Kahler’s wickedly gothic tale, one is tempted to reach for handy literary or cinematic references. There’s a dash of Conrad. A bit of Hitchcock. Notes of Melville, Darwin, and Robinson Crusoe—and certainly more than a whiff of Lord of the Flies. But really, Eden Undone is completely its own thing. Bizarre, mesmerizing, and compellingly tragic, Kahler’s fine book confronts an essential truth about those who ditch civilization: Try as we might, humans cannot elude the tyranny of our own nature.”

—Hampton Sides, New York Times bestselling author of The Wide Wide Sea

“A wild ride through an extraordinary true story, Eden Undone is 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.”

–Susan Orlean, New York Times bestselling author of The Library Book

“Abbott Kahler is a master of nonfiction suspense, with a touch of the macabre. Eden Undone reads like a dark and twisted Gilligan’s Island – half wasteland and half paradise, haunted by utopian delusions, mysterious deaths, and madness.”

—Debby Applegate, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age

“One of my favourite writers has knocked it out of the park yet again. In Eden Undone, Abbott Kahler has created a book as fantastic as the true story she weaves. With taut prose and sublime storytelling, she crafts an atmospheric page-turner, ominous and thought-provoking, with the best last line I’ve read in decades.”

—Kate Moore, New York Times bestselling author of The Radium Girls and The Woman They Could Not Silence

Abbott Kahler, formerly writing as Karen Abbott, is the New York Times bestselling author of Sin in the Second City; American Rose; Liar, Temptress, Soldier, Spy; and The Ghosts of Eden Park. She is also the host of Remus: The Mad Bootleg King, a podcast about legendary Jazz Age bootlegger George Remus. A native of Philadelphia, she lives in New York City and in Greenport, New York.