
A heartfelt letter opens this intimate tale, penned by a woman living far from home on a remote island she and her companions reached by a modest fishing boat. The fragile settlement is split between a stone‑built wing clinging to sheer cliffs and a timber half that once served summer fishers, while the endless sea crashes against jagged “Gallows cliffs” to the west. Grief hangs heavy after the tragic loss of a young boy named Joseph, and the narrator’s words ripple with longing for her sisters and the familiar comforts she left behind.
Within the stark beauty of the island, everyday chores become a delicate dance with solitude, as the narrator describes fire‑lit evenings, the creaking of old clocks, and the whisper of unseen voices that mingle with the wind. Beneath the surface, strange and unsettling events begin to surface, suggesting that the island holds secrets far deeper than its rugged shorelines. The story unfolds as she strives to make sense of her new world, keeping listeners anchored to both her raw emotions and the mysterious pulse of the place she now calls home.
Language
da
Duration
~1 hours (62K characters)
Publisher of text edition
Project Gutenberg
Credits
Jens Sadowski and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net. This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive.
Release date
2021-06-01
Rights
Public domain in the USA.
Subjects

1885–1962
Best known for the memoir Out of Africa, this Danish writer brought a storyteller’s voice to themes of memory, fate, love, and loss. Writing as Isak Dinesen, she created fiction and memoirs that feel intimate, elegant, and haunting all at once.
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