A libidinous young woman seeks out experience on a remote Alaskan homestead in this hilarious and sensual novel "about people who belong everywhere and nowhere and the vast, unknowable wilderness of desire.... Sexy and dark and strange and absolutely perfect" (Carmen Maria Machado, author of In the Dream House)." 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. 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 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 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 facade of good manners to reveal all of our deepest needs and naked desires.
A TIME Best Book of the Summer - A lusty young woman seeks out experience on a remote Alaskan homestead in this erotic and darkly humorous novel "Rukeyser weaves a dreamlike spell--'Twin Peaks' by way of 'Northern Exposure.'" --LA Times "Fantastic." --The New York Times Mira is a loner, a drop out, an obsessive fascinated by the concept of sleaze. She wants two things: to move to Alaska and find the tattooed fisherman that's the object of her desire. Her single-mindedness takes her to the remote Kodiak Archipelago, where she finds work at a homestead-turned-tourist-lodge offering a carousel of meticulously scripted Alaskan experiences. But the lodge is failing and, as life on Lavender Island becomes increasingly claustrophobic and strange, Mira's plans for her future become more elaborate and perverse. Part meditation on unhinged longing, part biting commentar