Wanderfoot (The Dream Ship)

by Cynthia Stockley

Wanderfoot, published in 1913 and issued in England as The Dream Ship, is a novel by the Rhodesian-born writer Cynthia Stockley. On a liner bound from Ireland to New York, Garrett Westenra, a lonely Irish doctor who has just buried his mother, meets Val, a restless and gifted woman who writes for her living and carries old wounds and a dependence on drugs. Their marriage is tested by poverty, illness, his career in America and her need to wander, and the story moves from New York to Jersey and then to Paris and the south of France as husband, wife and child try to live together. Stockley writes about love, addiction and women's independence with unusual directness for her time. The full text is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.