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As the principal engineer of an aerospace company, fifty-six-year-old Ron Pritchard is a natural problem solver. However, losing his wife, Susan, on the cusp of their twenty-fifth anniversary is too much for even him to handle, though he carries himself with a signature calm that defines his character throughout the novel. More than anything else, Pritchard wants to be left alone as he embarks on a solo vacation to Tahiti, determined to scatter Susan's ashes on the beach where they once had imagined creating memories together. As fate will have it, Pritchard's wish for solitude will have to be put on hold. A relatively uneventful flight to Papeete and French Polynesia hardly hints at the chaos to ensue. Pritchard, along with celebrity singer Taylor Smith and her group of five, including her agent and mother, are given the option to wait or take a flight with Cooper's Charters to Bora Bora. In the moment, the decision is an easy one: A short thirty-minute flight, even if its on an extremely old plane, seems better than waiting for who knows how long.
Fueled by greed, Teddy Cooper of Cooper's Charters hatches a plan to hand Taylor Smith over to the villainous Snake Caputo. Hardly the big boss, Cooper envisions earning a nice bonus from Caputo where he can enjoy the luxuries of the island. However, when he dies mid-flight, all hell breaks loose. Caputo watches them fly by their designated landing area while those on board avoid major peril due to Pritchard's basic flying skills. While Taylor's bodyguard becomes an unfortunate casualty, Pritchard is able to save the singer and the rest of her group, but to what degree? On one hand, their plane is in the water, about to be submerged with their stuff onboard, while on the other, Snake and his henchman are determined to find where the plane landed, capture the singer, and ask for an outrageous ransom.
It is at this point in the narrative that Plautz's protagonist begins to truly show what he is made of. Whether it is fishing to feed the group or building a fire in hopes of rescue, Pritchard is suddenly relevant again, and his calm demeanor, along with his ability to engineer solutions to the challenges life presents him with, make him the perfect person to be wrecked on an island with. With threats to his existence at every corner, Pritchard demonstrates his wit time and time again. As the character who is front and center in the work, he is playing chess while the antagonists are playing checkers, and that is exemplified by what he does with the stash of drugs he finds on the plane that he knows Caputo and his cronies will eventually come for. Driven by Pritchard's character arc, the action unfolds seamlessly, capturing seven days of mayhem from the characters' lens. In the process, the author conducts a deep exploration of what it means to exist and to work with the hand you're dealt. What should have been a low-key vacation on a Bora Bora beach ends up being a nail-biting rollercoaster ride that promises to yield entirely unexpected surprises and hopes for new beginnings. In a classic rendition of the fight or flight scenario, Plautz develops characters whose mettle shines through in the most challenging of moments.