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"The colony reveals the untold history of the infamous American leprosy settlement on the Hawaiian island of Molokai and of the exceptional people who managed to survive under the most horrific circumstances." "In 1866, twelve men and women and one small child were put aboard a leaky schooner and cast away to an island prison. Two weeks later a dozen others were exiled, then forty more, and then a hundred. Tracked by bounty hunters and torn from their families, the luckless were loaded into shipboard cattle stalls and abandoned in a lawless place where brutality held sway. Many did not have leprosy, and many who did were not contagious, yet all were ensnared in a shared nightmare. Their natural prison had little food, little medicine, and terribly little hope." "Exile on Molokai continued for more than a century, the longest and deadliest instance of medical segregation in American history. In all, more than eight thousand people were banished to the settlement. Some remain there today." "Here, for the first time, John Tayman reveals the complete history of this fascinating and troubling spot and its inhabitants. Using rare historical documents, letters, journals, government reports, newspaper accounts, and hundreds of hours of interviews, he tells the story of unsuspecting people tumbled into a situation beyond imagination. It is a fantastic epic of ruthless manhunts, thrilling escapes, shipwrecks and tidal waves, murder and mutiny, bizarre medical experiments, and tragic, irreversible error." "The Colony brings to life the unforgettable individuals of this unique community: the residents, young and old, who persevered and forged new lives for themselves and the outsiders who were drawn to the place. The astounding cast includes a young Catholic priest who volunteered to live among the exiles and in his sacrifice found both death and certain sainthood; a brilliant German scientist, coolly calculating, who undertook one of the most unsettling cases of human experimentation in history; and the tuberculosis-stricken writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who wiled his way in, fell close to death, then emerged to sketch a stunning portrait of the colony, transforming it for a time into the most famous place in the world."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved. |
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