Gay's year on Sunset Island

by Marguerite Aspinwall

"Gay's year on Sunset Island" by Marguerite Aspinwall is a juvenile adventure novel written in the early 20th century. It follows fifteen-year-old Gay Annersley and her close-knit adoptive family as they decamp to a Caribbean island owned by her sea-captain uncle, hoping the climate will restore her ailing uncle’s health. Amid house-restoration, island exploration, and family teamwork, they stumble on clues to a legendary pirate hoard linked to Sir Henry Morgan. The story blends coming-of-age, survival, and treasure-hunt mystery with a strong emphasis on character, courage, and resourcefulness. The opening of the novel finds Gay narrating life in a New England household upended by financial ruin and her Uncle Charles’s breakdown until Uncle Joe arrives with a bold plan: sail south on his schooner, the Myra, to his newly acquired Sunset Island. After a calm voyage, they anchor in a lagoon, reach a long-abandoned planter’s house, and begin repairs; the Myra departs, due to return in two months. A hurricane passes, and wreckage bearing the Myra’s name drifts near the reef, a discovery Gay and Syd quietly fear may mean the ship is lost. The family organizes into indoor and outdoor “teams,” clears paths, plants gardens, and, while sorting an old chest, finds Rosemary Carreau’s 1804 diary describing a copied map to Morgan’s treasure—though the map itself is missing. They set out to circumnavigate the island, camp on the beaches, and take impromptu lessons in stars and shells before Reddy tumbles into a hidden cave complex that could be an ideal pirate cache. They camp in the caves, trade tales of buccaneers, and as night falls Gay wakes to a mysterious sound, leaving the early chapters poised between domestic enterprise and looming adventure.