The year is 1966 and on Great Barrier Island 55 miles off the coast of Auckland, New Zealand, Red O'Hara leads a solitary life. A former World War II POW, Red was hospitalized for a time upon his return and took to heart his doctors' advice to set objectives: "One day Red had surprised them by obliging. He wrote a single word in large childish letters and taped the sheet of paper to the wall above his bed. 'Survive,' was all it said." But even 20 years after the end of the war, he carries his guilt and his terror close; only an unvarying routine of work and exercise stands between him and his hellish memories of the Japanese camps in Burma.

On the island, O'Hara has but two neighbors: the elderly Scottish misanthrope Angus McCleod and Bernie, a dying alcoholic. Life is isolated, simple, and predictable. When Bernie dies, however, he leaves his shack to Rosie Tretheway, a disillusioned doctor, and the sudden arrival of a woman in their remote locale upsets O'Hara's and Angus's hard-won equilibrium. In Sole Survivor Derek Hansen has crafted a story of love, friendship, and adventure as these three prickly characters learn first to get along and then to work together to save the island from the depredations of a commercial Japanese fishing trawler. And in O'Hara, Rosie, and Angus he has given the reader some people to really care about, even as they grow to care about each other. --Alix Wilber