Robinson Crusoe at the Waterpark

A short story by Elizabeth McCracken from the collection Reader, I Married Him: Stories inspired by Jane Eyre.

In ‘Robinson Crusoe at the Waterpark’, a family trip to a Texan waterpark prompts a life-changing decision.

Edited by Tracy Chevalier, the full collection, Reader I Married Him, brings together some of the finest and most creative voices in fiction today, to celebrate and salute the strength and lasting relevance of Charlotte Brontë’s game-changing novel and its beloved narrator.

Reviews

Praise for the full collection, READER, I MARRIED HIM:

‘A terrific set of stories by some of our leading novelists, each of whom engages with a chosen aspect of Jane Eyre’ THE NEW STATESMAN

‘A clever idea well-executed; a treat for fans of short fiction and for Brontë's many ardent fans’ KIRKUS REVIEWS

‘Exemplary…written by some of today's best female writers’ THE CHICAGO TRIBUNE

‘These pieces create a beguiling picture of women and men and desire, in which everyone is searching, like Jane, for happiness and wondering whether marriage is really an answer. The book acts as a prism spreading all kinds of literary and historical refractions, and it’s a reminder that Charlotte Brontë, too, has many sides’ GLOBE AND MAIL

About the author

Elizabeth McCracken is the author of five books: Here’s
Your Hat What’s Your Hurry (stories), the novels The
Giant’s House and Niagara Falls All Over Again, the
memoir An Exact Replica of a Figment of My Imagination,
and the most recent collection Thunderstruck & Other Stories, which won the 2015 Story Prize. A former public librarian, she is now a faculty member at the University of Texas, Austin. She didn’t read Jane Eyre until she was in her mid-thirties. Her absent-mindedness about reading it meant the amazing gift of a great book that she had nearly no misconceptions about: she sat on a rented sofa in rural Denmark and fell in love with it.