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Book Review of And the Sea Will Tell

And the Sea Will Tell
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Two couples--one wealthy and married, the other an ex-con and his hippie girlfriend-- separately set sail for a remote South Pacific island, each hoping to play "Adam and Eve" in paradise. Instead of getting away from it all, they take it with them-- their pasts and prejudices, and the petty battles over status and material goods that arise from their different social classes. Only two people out of the original four live through the experience. In 1974, wealthy Californians Mac and Muff Graham sailed to Palmyra Island, 1000 miles south of Hawaii, in their boat the Sea Wind . Buck Walker and Jennifer Jenkins arrived soon after on the same atoll, fleeing drug charges in Hawaii. Several months later, Walker and Jenkins returned to Hawaii in the Sea Wind , claiming that the Grahams were presumed dead when the dinghy in which they had gone fishing was washed ashore unmanned. However, in 1980, vacationers on Palmyra found bones soon identified as those of Muff Graham, who was determined to have been shot. Walker and Jenkins were charged with murder: in separate San Francisco trials, he was sentenced to life imprisonment and she was acquitted.