A Fictional Romantic Novel: Lost Island is a romantic novel about escaping from New York City and into a voyage on a schooner toward the unknown sea. Jane Carey, who is the protagonist, finds love, a deserted island, and struggles with civilization, and yet on her mind is always the iridescent merry nature. Lost Island is undoubtedly Follett's masterpiece in which she develops her themes of love, escape, nature worship, and takes the reader on a romantic adventure into her world.

By the age of fourteen, Barbara Newhall Follett had published two books with Alfred A. Knopf: 1927's enchanting The House Without Windows and Eepersip's Life There and 1928's The Voyage of the Norman D., the account of her journey from New Haven to Nova Scotia as "cabin boy" on a lumber schooner. Both books received rave reviews.

But that same year Barbara's life turned upside down when her father left his family for a younger woman. With no income, Barbara and her mother went to sea with their typewriters, hoping to earn a living by writing about their adventures....