The Plover

Declan O Donnell has sailed out of Oregon and deep into the vast, wild ocean, having had just finally *enough* of other people and their problems. He will go it alone, he will be his own country, he will be beholden to and beloved of no one. *No man is an island, my butt,* he thinks. *I am that very man*. . . .

But the galaxy soon presents him with a string of odd, entertaining, and dangerous passengers, who become companions of every sort and stripe. *The Plover* is the story of their adventures and misadventures in the immense blue country one of their company calls Pacifica. Hounded by a mysterious enemy, reluctantly acquiring one new resident after another, Declan O Donnell's lonely boat is eventually crammed with humor, argument, tension, and a resident herring gull.

Brian Doyle's *The Plover* is a sea novel, a maritime adventure, the story of a cold man melting, a compendium of small miracles, an elegy to Edmund Burke, a watery quest, a battle at sea---and a rapturous, heartfelt celebration of life's surprising paths, planned and unplanned.