Jane Mendelsohn's first novel neither warrants the high praise given by other reviewers, nor is it without merit. This admittedly brief book is a series of moods and impressions that wash over one another, like waves on the island beach where Earhart is stranded. This is not a story for those of the action-picture mentality.Mendelsohn writes compact prose in winningly direct images: "In the Electra the light is blue. There's a smell of gasoline." But elsewhere, an effective metaphor in the opening pages reappears so often that it loses its power.There just isn't enough material here. Pages given over to epigraphs (Woolf, Defoe, and Bronte) and acknowledgements are too much like padding. In the end, this is an undemanding fantasy that will please many readers.