English

The Leaning Wind

"This is the story of a voyage by sampan, in the South Pacific. In Road My Body Goes (published by the John Day Company of New York and, under the title The Dangerous Islands by Michael Jones in London) I told of a part of that voyage and the of the life of "Keneti" Emory, the ethnologist, and me among the kindly Polynesians of Tepuka, the Tuamotu Islands. It remains to recall our further wanderings among other South Pacific islands." - Clifford Gessler. So The Leaning Wind is Gessler's continuation with the Mangarevan Expedition of 1934. The expedition eventually crossed 14,000 miles and touched 56 South Pacific islands. Islands barely recognized by the outside world, docked at and studied, as well as the better known ones of French Polynesia. Just by the sheer number of islands, The Leaning Wind is not nearly as close and personal as Gessler's previous book on Tepuka. However, WWII was yet unimaginable and the big world was yet to engulf this simple paradise. For now, each island was it's own tiny, unique world, with it's own flavors and characters. In The Leaning Wind Gessler finds and writes of the unique and mysterious threads of this storied corner of 1930's Pacific.

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