The Seaplane on Final Approach

Tourists arrive all summer, by boat or seaplane, at Stu 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. Stu and Maureen's lodge is failing, as is their marriage. Eighteen-year-old Mira has been hired for the season as the lodge's baker and housekeeper. But she's also busy gleefully nursing twin obsessions: buildinga working theory of American sleaze and pursuing a young fisherman she's determined is 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 Stu, 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 of the lodge realize just how isolated Lavender Island really is--