Escape and Adventure

By the time they came together for their yearlong Tuin expedition in the spring of 1981, both Lucy Irvine and Gerald “G” Kingsland had each lived a life full of travel, adventure and unconventional experience. Although Lucy and G were raised in different eras within differing social classes, it was their shared restlessness and priority for living authentically, often at the expense of worldly comforts and assurances, that unites them for the purpose described in Irvine’s memoir. Lucy is charmed by G’s grit and capability, admiring that “He had been to hot places with palm trees…had caught shark, made campfires, lived in a tent and planted vegetable gardens on other islands… (33). To Lucy, G is a larger-than-life character and so she regards G’s two previous attempts before Tuin at the “Robinson Crusoe year” (26)—once on an island in the Indian ocean and once...