As she tours the Galapagos Islands, where Darwin studied the evolution of the species, Jane Schwartz of Connecticut reflects on the evolution of friendship. She and the tour guide, Martha, used to be best friends until Martha inexplicably dropped her. Why?

The author takes the reader back one million years--to A.D. 1986 and the beginning of the human race with the descendants of a small group of survivors of an ill-fated cruise ship to the Galápagos Archipelage. The narrator is the ghost of a Vietnam veteran.

When giant tortoise Arlene's daisy wreath turns into an island fad, animals from all over scurry to buy and sell trendy flower.

"When the magic tree house returns it whisks Jack and Annie away to the Galapagos Islands where they become World Turtle Experts and must save a tortoise in danger of an erupting volcano"--

"Born to immigrant parents in Minnesota just before the turn of the century, Frances Frankowski grew up coveting the life of her best friend, Rosalie Mendel. And yet, decades later, when the women reconnect in San Francisco, their lives have diverged. Rosalie is a housewife and mother, while Frances works for the Office of Naval Intelligence and has just been given a top-secret assignment: marry handsome spy Ainslie Conway and move to the Galápagos...