Galápagos Regained: A Novel

Galápagos Regained follows Chloe Bathurst, a fictional unemployed Victorian actress who takes work on Charles Darwin's estate caring for the birds, lizards, and giant tortoises he collected during his voyage around the world. When Chloe learns of the Great God Contest—a competition sponsored by the Percy Bysshe Shelley Society offering £10,000 to whoever can prove or disprove the existence of a Supreme Being—she sees an opportunity. She believes Darwin's materialist theory of evolution might provide the answer: if nature required no divine intervention, perhaps God never existed. Chloe embarks on an ambitious journey to test this theory. Her travels take her by brigantine to Brazil, by steamboat up the Amazon, and by hot-air balloon across the Andes, all leading toward the Galápagos archipelago. There she plans to collect live specimens that would demonstrate evolutionary theory to the contest judges.