In GREEN DOLPHIN STREET Elizabeth Goudge returns to a scene she has made famous in Island Magic and in many short stories—the Channel Islands. The time is 1830. The place is the little city of Saint Pierre on the largest of the islands. The characters are as varied and interesting and provocative a group as ever assembled between the pages of a book. There are Sophie and Octavius Le Patourel, parents of the heroines—Marianne, moody, passionate and brilliant; and Marguerite, lovely, sunny tempered and possessed of a great capacity for enjoying life. There is Dr. Edward Ozonne, whom Sophie loved in her youth, and his handsome son William. The return of these two to the Islands, after an absence of many years, sets off disrupting sparks in the quiet and peaceful lives of its inhabitants. There are also Captain O'Hara, the skipper of that glorious ship the Green Dolphin, who sails through the book as its presiding genie from almost the first page to the last; Timothy Haslam the lumberman; Samuel Kelly and his wife Susanna who typify in their courageous persons the idealism of those men and women who sailed away from the Old World to found what they hoped would be an earthly paradise beyond the seas. Later in the story, there come Veronique, William's little daughter, Nat the one-eyed sailor who is her playmate, and Old Nick, the parrot.

And as setting for all of these, there is the Island, a character too with a definite personality, an island of great beauty, of superstitions, legends, history, and breath-taking scenery.

The absorbing plot revolves around William and the Patourel girls, both of whom are in love with him. Under unfortunate circumstances, William makes his choice—and marries the wrong girl. Thereafter, although he is a very ordinary man, it is his fate to lead a most extraordinary life. From the idyllic existence on the Island, William entered the Royal Navy which he adorned creditably until in the course of time he got into difficulties and was obliged to leave the service and seek his fortune in New Zealand. Here, first as a lumberman and later as sheep farmer, he endured many things, earthquake and the Maori wars, and all the vicissitudes of pioneer life. The story ends as it begins, in Saint Pierre, where the girl William loved but had not married had been living all the while.

From the dust jacket