Crusoe's Island: A Ramble in the Footsteps of Alexander Selkirk: With Sketches of Adventure in California and Washoe

In 1869, a restless American writer named J. Ross Browne undertook an improbable pilgrimage: he would row through treacherous waters to reach the remote Juan Fernandez Islands, the exact spot where Alexander Selkirk was marooned in 1704 and lived alone for four years, the real man who inspired Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe. Browne was no ordinary tourist. As a "rebellious passenger" aboard the ship Anteus, he convinced fellow travelers to join him in a small boat with limited supplies, braving violent storms in pursuit of adventure and literary history. The result is a wonderfully intrepid travel narrative that blends vivid colonial-era adventure with philosophical wandering. Browne reaches the island, explores its legendary sites, and reflects on what it means to chase the ghost of a story across oceans. But the book roams further still, through California and Washoe (Nevada), making it a sweeping portrait of the American West at a moment when it still felt wild and untrampled. For readers who love travel writing, literary history, and the romance of getting genuinely lost.