An Islands Romance

New Novel Has Papuan Setting

Mr. G. Munro Turnbull, Who Is

well known in the Pacific, has given us another Islands romance entitled “Para dise Plumes.” It is a brightly written, quick-moving story of life in Papua. The plot is on conventional lines, but the set ting is most unusual and the scenes so truly limned that we get a quite excep tional story of life in Papua, written by one who knows intimately the conditions and the country.

The hero is Stephen Blake, an official of the Papuan service. He is an altogether delightful creature —physically, morally and mentally perfect—and is calculated mightily to stir the imagination of the average romantic girl. But we should like to hear the opinion of him expressed by the hard-bitten, hard-sweating magistrates and patrol officers of Papua, who have to spend their lives fighting flies and savages in this somewhat gloomy and forbidding territory. The heroine is Leslie Rowan, and she goes to Papua to marry a planter who has a secret native mistress, and whose trading associations are not all that they might be. She is the sort of visitor of whom lonely patrol officers dream, but who never materialise. She meets the

charming Stephen Blake on the steamer, and heart complications are inevitable.

Apart from the idealism with which the chief characters are painted, the novel measures up to a high standard and is well worth the attention of any dis criminating fiction reader. It has excep tional value because of the faithfulness with which it portrays the industrial and social conditions in Papua in this present year of grace. Angus and Robertson, the publishers, are to be complimented upon an excellent production job.