A newspaper man wakes up rich. That's the simple version. In 1906, when Zona Gale wrote Romance Island, the American Dream was still fresh enough to interrogate rather than merely celebrate. St. George has inherited a steam yacht, a fortune, and the social climbers who come with both. But he's still the same man who ate lunch at greasy counters three months ago, still haunted by the person he was before the money arrived. When old friends board his yacht for a dinner party, the real drama begins. A mysterious woman tied to an attempted murder. A heiress whose case dominates the newspapers. And the question that cuts deeper than any mystery: when wealth arrives overnight, does it liberate you or trap you in a performance you never auditioned for? Gale writes with a lightness that masks real teeth, skewering the giddiness of sudden fortune and the absurd theater of class mobility.
