EVOLUTION OF JANE

Six hundred miles off the Ecuadoran mainland, just south of the equator, the Galapagos Islands are home to diverse species of exotic wildlife -- and tourists of every stripe and feather. It is here that Jane Barlow Schwartz embarks on a quest as urgent as Charles Darwin's one hundred and fifty years before: to find out why her childhood friendship with her cousin and soul-mate Martha ended; and what unknown event, family feud, or unintended slight caused the happiest part of her life to become extinct. Along the way, amid blue-footed boobies, red-lipped batfish, and various species mating, squabbling, separating, and coming together again, Jane ponders the origin of her own colorful and peculiar heritage, a secret history of natural selection, and the flawed and fascinating evolutionary process that makes us all who we are.