Susan Barton finds herself marooned on an island in the Atlantic with an Englishman named Robinson Cruso and his mute slave Friday. Rescued after a year of Cruso's company, back in England with Friday in tow, she approaches the author Daniel Foe, offering him the story of the island if he will make her rich and famous. But Foe is less interested in the history of Robinson Cruso than in the story of Susan Barton. How did she earn a living in Brazil? Who were the mutineers who marooned her? Where is the daughter for whom she claims to have been searching the ends of the earth? And how did Friday lose his tongue?