Deciphering Edward José: Decoding Nedra

When two love-sick young people run off to be married, and aren't caught, they usually get married. It was different with Grace Vernon and Hugh Ridgway, though. Worn out by the social affairs given in honor of their approaching marriage, they elope in the wee small hours of a certain summer morning, and being mistaken for housebreakers by the gardener and other members of the household, are pursued. A couple of cops as added starters make the chase even more interesting, and they don't breathe easily until, a couple of hours after climbing a rope ladder up the side of an ocean liner, they come out from their hiding place and find themselves at sea. Not nearly so much "at sea" then, however, as later, when Hugh finds that Grace is much smitten with Henry Veath, an old-time friend of his. Hugh cares nothing about the fact that Lady Tenny, another passenger, seems to care more for his society than for anyone else. Comes a typhoon, the ship is dashed on the rocks, and in the ensuing darkness and panic Hugh makes a brave attempt to save one who clings closely to him, one he thinks to be Grace. Then blackness, and with returning consciousness and the light, the realization that he is cast away on a strange tropical isle, the isle of Nedra, with Lady Tenny. Add to this that they are found and worshiped as two gods by the savage natives of the isle; that their enforced wedding is interrupted by the landing of a U.S. ship; that Hugh goes home only to find Grace married to Veath; that he finds that he doesn't care a particle; that he rushes back to Lady Tenny, and you have just a bare conception of this romantic love story.