Robert Dean Frisbie

Robert Dean Frisbie ( born April 17, 1896 in Cleveland, USA, † November 18, 1948 on the island of Rarotonga, Cook Islands ) was an American writer whose subjects are mainly located in the South Pacific.

Biography

Frisbie was born in 1896 in Cleveland, Ohio, the son of Arthur Grazly Frisbie and Florence Benson. Even as a child he was weak and sickly. As a soldier in the U.S. Army, he took part in the First World War. With the retirement of inquiry he was told that he was suffering from tuberculosis and would not survive the coming cold winter in Ohio probably. For regeneration in a warm climate, he left America and settled in 1920 on the island of Tahiti down. There he farmed at Papeari in the south of Tahiti Nui a plantation. On Tahiti he met the writer Charles Bernard Nordhoff and James Norman Hall, the authors of the trilogy about the mutiny on the Bounty

Inspired by them, and his idol Robert Louis Stevenson, Frisbie wrote short stories and magazine articles about the South Seas, which were published in various American magazines. In 1924 he gave up the plantation and moved to Rarotonga, where he operated a trading post. During this time Frisbie visited several islands of the Cook Archipelago, French Polynesia and Samoa. In 1929 he published his first book, a collection of South Sea Stories, under the name of The Book of Puka Puka.

On Puka Puka he married in 1928, the 16 -year-old Ngatokorua, the adopted daughter of a local missionary, with whom he had five children: Charles, Florence, William Hopkins, Elaine Metua and Ngatokorua -i Matauea aka " Nga ". Ngatokorua died on January 14, 1939 from tuberculosis. With its part still very young children Frisbie moved to the remote atoll Suwarrow in the northern Cook archipelago. His experiences on the desert island, including how he survived a hurricane with his children, he processed in his well -known novel of Iceland Desire. In 1942 he returned to Rarotonga. There he married a second time, the locals Esetera. The marriage was short-lived and went back to Puka Puka Frisbie. 1943 tuberculosis was diagnosed again, and the young lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force and later writer James Michener flew him for treatment to a hospital in Pago Pago in American Samoa. Between the two men, a friendship, which greatly influenced the later work of Michener developed.

The recovery was rather sluggish, nevertheless continued Frisbie his restless traveling on. On November 18, 1948, he died on the island of Rarotonga in a tetanus infection. His grave is in the cemetery of Avarua, Rarotonga.

Frisbies children came under the mediation of James Mitchener with friends and relatives in New Zealand and Hawaii. His daughter Florence, called " Johnny", his second child with Ngatokorua, was also a writer. Under the title The Frisbies of the South Seas released the adventurous family history.

Bibliography (excerpt)

  • The Book of Puka Puka (1929 )
  • The Ghost of Alexander Perks, A. B. (1931 )
  • My Tahiti ( 1932)
  • A Copra Iceland (1932 )
  • Mr. Moonlight 's Iceland (1939 )
  • Iceland of Desire (1944 )
  • Amaru: a Romance of the South Seas (1945 )
  • Dawn Sails North (1949 )
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