Chita: A Memory of Last Island

By: Lafcadio Hearn

Narrated by: Frank Clem

Lafcadio Hearn (1850-1904) was a writer, critic and journalist. His novel, Chita: A Memory of Last Island, is about a young girl, Chita, who survives a devastating tropical storm.

Last Island, a holiday resort in the Gulf of Mexico, is destroyed by the hurricane that kills Chita’s mother and leaves her adrift at sea. Chita is saved and adopted by a Spanish fisherman, Feliu, and his wife, Carmen, a religious woman who perceives the baby as a gift from God.

The descriptions of nature: the Gulf Coast, the islands, the waterways, and sea are epic, Hearn’s account of the storm and the havoc it wrought are spectacular.

Public Domain (P)2020 Museum Audiobooks

Poetic Novella touches on a lot of history at once

I thoroughly enjoyed listening to Chita. Lafcadio Hearn is a poet and teacher disguised as a novelist.

In Chita, we get illustrative instruction on the disease, natural threats, and social hierarchies that ruled the lives of old New Orleans and inhabitants on the coasts. And all through we learn how malleable cultural life was in coastal Louisiana.

My only critique on the reading is the pronunciation of the French and Spanish. It must’ve been hard to find someone who do all three languages featured in Chita well.