Makeshift - by Peter Rock (Hardcover)

Book Synopsis

"Lyrical and poignant, Makeshift proves a powerful antidote to the modern world. This must-read novel lures the reader in, not unlike the coastal wrecks that line the island." --Adam Johnson, author of The Wayfinder

Abandoned on a remote island known as Makeshift, three sisters--Ari, Heiko, and CeCe--believe they're the last humans on Earth.

These three, left alone after a band of foreigners slaughtered their entire community, must learn to fend for themselves. They fish and forage in the shallow waters of their protected cove, salvage useful treasures from the rusting hulks of ships that ran aground on its offshore reefs, and entertain themselves with half-remembered songs and tales from their time before.

But when they stray beyond the island into a wider, broken world, they find that life may not be as they believed. And upon their return to the island, they face further revelations that strain their bonds, hint that secrets may be everywhere, and affirm their need for one another in the face of a perilous future. Makeshift is a singular novel of hope and survival set on a small rock-bound island in the coastal Pacific Northwest, and a testament to devotion and allegiance rendered with the haunting grace of Rock's precision prose.

Review Quotes

"Peter Rock is one of my favorite writers and I loved reading Makeshift, a gorgeously written, terrifying, and tender foray into the heart of what it means to be in relationship to one another, and to our world which is not over, which is still home." --Karen Russell

"In Peter Rock's haunting and eerie eleventh novel, young Ari narrates a story of finding and making family after everything has gone wrong. Or have things gone wrong? Rock's glorious evocation of the natural world yearns for a time before, or in this case, after modern civilization--here, wreck-diving cormorants and trees responding to the north-western breezes serve as a Greek chorus for a world slaked of human intervention. Lyrical and poignant, Makeshift proves a powerful antidote to the modern world by tracing its landscape's roots. This must-read novel lures the reader in, not unlike the coastal wrecks that line the island of Makeshift." --Adam Johnson, author of The Wayfinder

About the Author

PETER ROCK is the author of eleven previous works of fiction, including My Abandonment, which won the Alex Award and was adapted into the film Leave No Trace. The recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, as well as a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and John Dos Passos Prize, he lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife and two daughters.