Rebecca Rukeyser

"A sharp, flawless debut" (Carmen Maria Machado) about a sex-obsessed young woman seeking out experience on a remote Alaskan homestead. Tourists arrive all summer, by boat or seaplane, at Lew and Maureen Jenkins's Lavender Island Wilderness Lodge in the Kodiak Archipelago, expecting adventure. But the spontaneity of their authentic Alaskan wilderness experience is meticulously scripted, except when real danger rears its head. Lew and Maureen's lodge is failing, as is their marriage. Mira has been hired for the season as the lodge's baker and housekeeper. But she's also busy gleefully nursing twin obsessions: building a working theory of what constitutes "sleaze" and pursuing a young fisherman she deems the embodiment of all things deliciously sleazy. Her plans become more perverse and elaborate, even as life on Lavender Island starts to unravel. By midseason, it becomes clear that Lew, the jovial, predatory patriarch of the lodge, has turned his sexual attentions to another young employee. As the mood of the lodge spirals into chaos, the inhabitants realize just how isolated Lavender Island really is. Hilarious, sensual, and charged with menace, The Seaplane on Final Approach brilliantly illuminates the mirage-thin line between the artificial and the feral. In this daring and psychologically razor-sharp debut, Rukeyser's characters tear aside the façade of good manners to reveal all of our deepest needs and naked desires.

A Novel

The Seaplane on Final Approach

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As far as anyone on Lavender Island was concerned, I had only ever existed here, in my stripey pants. I was a nice girl from a nice home, with little in the way of skills and the past that shapes everyone--immersive games, immersive Iust, a preoccupation with making our rooms our own, a hatred as vague as the thick end of a lighthouse beam that we swoop at anyone that crosses us. My ferocity was leveled at becoming.

Polly loved animals, which is something I didn't understand until I became friends with a woman who loved, above all things, her dog. She said to me, "I could never date a man who didn't love animals." I think this meant she was looking for someone with the ability to love without keeping a tally system of faults and grievances and items owed and affection earned. I can't be sure; her dog bit me.

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