Sole Survivor: A Novel

THE PLACE a remote, sparsely inhabited Pacific island. THE CHARACTERS three loners -- two men and a young woman -- who share a life of isolation and loneliness and are eventually forced to come to terms with themselves, one another, and the encroaching world. When Rosie Trethewey -- disillusioned doctor turned market researcher -- unexpectedly inherits a shack on the remote northern tip of New Zealand's Great Barrier Island, she decides it's time to begin a new life. She arrives at her new home to find she has two neighbors sharing the wilderness. One is Red O'Hara, traumatized by horrific wartime experiences working on the Burma railway as a P.O.W. of the Japanese. The other is Angus McLeod, a retired policeman, who has fled from a society he sees as soft and contemptible. Both are, in different ways, survivors. Rosie's sudden appearance panics Red and Angus. Both of them fear she will disrupt their neatly ordered lives. And they're right. Tough, smart, and practical, Rosie soon turns the lives of Red and Angus upside down, reawakening in Red feelings he has been repressing for years, and in Angus, feelings he has hardly ever acknowledged. As Red, Angus, and Rosie work out their relationship -- and as Red and Rosie gradually come to grips with the fact that they may just possibly love each other -- an unexpected threat draws them closer together: the depredations of a big Japanese trawler threaten to destroy their food supply and their environment. As they go to sea in a desperate attempt to prevent the rape of their island paradise, this extraordinary novel of survival and love moves toward a blazing finale that will remind many readers of The African Queen. Enriched with a cast of strong, interesting supporting characters -- a bluff naval officer and his smart, sassy, woman petty officer; the captain of the Japanese trawler; the island's storekeeper -- Sole Survivor is a great read, at once romantic and full of adventure and suspense, set against the background of a tropical paradise and the hostile sea. Derek Hansen's Sole Survivor is that rarest of achievements -- a totally satisfying novel.