The Life and Adventures of Robinson Crusoe

What follows is the patient labor of a man rebuilding a life from salvage. Robinson Crusoe hauls tools and powder from the broken ship, raises a fortified dwelling, tames a wild goat, carves a calendar into a post, and keeps a ledger of his misfortunes against his mercies. Illness and a terrible dream turn him toward the Bible he had ignored, and the book follows that inward change as closely as it follows the building of walls. Then, one noon on the familiar shore, a single footprint in the sand stops him where he stands.

Friday, the captive Crusoe rescues and comes to love as companion and near-family, brings the story its warmth. Their halting lessons in language and faith hold the book's finest turns, including the pupil's plain, unanswerable question, "why God no kill the devil, so make him no more do wicked?" Defoe lets the supposed savage out-reason his teacher, and lets Crusoe admit when he has judged a friend unjustly.

Told in a plainspoken voice that weighs every loss and every deliverance, this is the record of a restless man remade by twenty-eight years cast away. "How strange a chequer-work of Providence is the life of man!" Crusoe marvels, and the marvel is earned one salvaged plank and one hard-won prayer at a time.