The Daughter of Pangaran by David Divine (1963)

The Daughter of Pangaran
by David Divine
Publisher:  Little, Brown and Company
Copyright:  1963
Book Club Edition

A bewitchingly lovely Polynesian girl who has cast her spell over the raffish Alexander Hare and the lure of the South Sea Islands combine to make The Daughter of Pangaran an absorbing novel.  A fresh and lusty tale that is reminiscent at times of the best of Nordhoff and Hall and of Garland Roark, this South Seas romance is graced with a style and storytelling appeal of its own.  Palm trees, coral beaches and violent storms at sea form the background for the dramatic struggle of one woman against one man.

Through the last months of 1825 the ship Hippomenes lay at anchor while the people of Cape Town speculated endlessly over the manner of life aboard her.  Along the waterfront they called her the Seraglio.  She held the harem of Alexander Hare.

Before his expulsion from Cape Town, Hare bought Plandok, the daughter of a pirate prince of Borneo, in the last of a series of acquisitions.  The Hippomenes then sailed for the East and an uninhabited Cocos-Keeling atoll.  The idyll that Hare established there had one flaw.  Plandok, the daughter of the Pangaran, defied him.

Amoral but innocent, Plandok wages a spirited battle against Hare and the submissive members of his community.  Afraid of weakening from sentiment and ruthless because of that, she comes to dominate the lives of men:  Downie, the sycophant who feeds Hare's lust and fears and jealousy and dissension provoked by Plandok; John Clunies-Ross, the colorful adventurer whose respectable island community is threatened by the picaresque raffishness of the nearby Hare menage; Davies, the young Scot whom Plandok chooses for her own; and Hare himself, the audacious master who jeopardizes the lives and security of all for the love of one woman.

This enthralling and colorful story has the charm of David Divine's Boy on a Dolphin and, in a different fashion, the strength of his last novel, Thunder on the Chesapeake.  When David Divine writes of the sea, you can feel the salt spray on your cheeks and hear the whistle of the wind in the ship's rigging.  He is a master storyteller, and this tale of the strange but historically true Alexander Hare is one you will not soon forget.

Condition:  Used.  Hardcover.  Dust cover is discolored and darkened on the spine.  Dust cover shows wear, creasing and tears in the edges.  The corner of the front dust cover is ripped off, but there's scotch tape covering the space. Previous owner's name is blacked out on the front endpaper with date written underneath.  There's an envelope pasted to the front endpaper as a way to keep track of her books.  Pages are tanned from age.  Binding is splitting between the covers and endpapers, possibly starting to split elsewhere, but pages are in tact.

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