Floreana

A Novel

By: Midge Raymond

Narrated by: Abigail Reno, Elisabeth Lagelee

Length: 9 hrs

Publisher's summary

On the Galápagos Islands, the lives of two women—a century apart—converge in the most startling ways in a historical novel of desperate love, secrets, and deception by the author of My Last Continent.

After ten years away to build a family, Mallory returns to Floreana Island in the Galápagos, and to Gavin, the mentor with whom she had a long-ago affair. Their project is to build nests to revive the vulnerable penguin population. But Mallory doesn’t dare tell Gavin why she’s really come back. Then she discovers old journals hidden in a lava cave—confessions of another woman who needed to disappear.

In 1929, Dore Strauch left the life she knew to create a new one with the man she loved. On remote Floreana they’re beholden to no one but each other. Until the arrival of strangers, settlers in their paradise. Suddenly, Dore realizes that it’s no longer the refuge she imagined. And that amid the island’s fragile beauty, people can do the most terrible things.

A gripping reimagining of a true story, Floreana intertwines the emotional journeys of two women bound by dark secrets, the want of escape, and the lengths to which they’ll go to find their place in the world.

©2025 Midge Raymond. (P)2024 Brilliance Publishing, Inc., all rights reserved.

Critic reviews

“Raymond’s novel is riveting and revelatory, a murder mystery embedded in other mysteries—of love and regret, loss and redemption, and how we can manage to hold on to the parts of this beautiful world that were never ours in the first place.”—Karen Joy Fowler, New York Times bestselling author of Booth and We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves

“Floreana is a beautiful, unexpected, and powerful novel about the fragility of life and love in its many forms…A powerful and totally unique book.”—Samantha Greene Woodruff, bestselling author of The Lobotomist’s Wife and The Trade Off

“Floreana masterfully weaves together the tales of two women who escape to the same faraway island almost a century apart. Raymond’s beautiful and absorbing novel kept me turning the pages.”—Karin Lin-Greenberg, author of You Are Here