Beautiful, intelligent, and bored with predictable beaus in Gilded-Age Chicago, Elsie Klemens entertains her aunt’s offer to explore a mystery in tropical Florida. Like Robinson Crusoe, she embarks on a whirlwind adventure to throw off constraints, and embracing a ruse, she alights upon an unanticipated niece, a whimsical housekeeper, and Frank Seldon, a handsome rail clerk who moonlights as a suspicious writer of all Elsie despises. But when, like Crusoe, she is marooned through misadventure, she discovers the hidden keys that open doors to enlightenment, to promise, and to seeing in Frank how unfathomably vivid and sublime life can be.