Laysen

In Lost Laysen, Mitchell explores the dynamics of three male characters and their relationship to the only female character, Courtenay Ross, a strong-willed American missionary to the South Pacific island of Laysen.

He follows Courtenay to Laysen to protect her from perceived foreign savages.

In a gender reversal, the woman writer (Mitchell) narrates Lost Laysen through a heroic male character, Billy Duncan.

Mitchell, M., et al., Lost Laysen, p. 99. Mardo's desires are similar to those of Rhett Butler in his ardent pursuit of Scarlett O'Hara in Mitchell's epic novel, Gone with the Wind.

The narrator of the tale is Billy Duncan, "a rough, hardened soldier of fortune", Mitchell, M., et al., Lost Laysen, p. 97. who is frequently involved in fights that leave him near death.

The same themes were treated with increasing artistry in Lost Laysen, the novella Mitchell wrote as a teenager in 1916, Mitchell, Margaret and Debra Freer.