A synopsis of my favorite book of 2011
A book I read this past month entitled The Survivors by Gregg Luke had me enthralled from the moment the cover captured my interest at the library, and it never once lost it. The book is about two survivors of a twin engine prop plane crash. They were headed to Corpus Christi Texas from Phoenix Arizona. A massive lightning storm hit, and caused the navigational system to go offline throwing them off course and eventually turning the plane into a pyre in the middle of a South American jungle. The survivors are a botanist by the name of David, and a young Mormon girl named Melodee who is hiding a secret. The two quickly bond, and have to find a way to survive the elements, as well as the other, nefarious inhabitants of this jungle.
Why it’s my favorite
It began rather quickly, and did not waste time introducing the main character as an intelligent, yet ill-tempered man with a lot of emotional baggage. You get a lot of his back story in the midst of his race to the airport, and it did not bore me or make me want to skip a few pages to get to the more exciting stuff. Once the protagonists arrive at the jungle locale, the writer immediately makes it clear the dire situation they find themselves in. The pace slows down when Melodee introduces religion to David, but it does not take long for the situation to become life threatening, and the steady changes in the pace of the book help create an ebb and flow to the story. The descriptive ability of the writer makes it easy to paint a picture of the surroundings in your mind as you are reading it. It is a definite page turner, and would be enjoyed by religious and non-religious alike due to the epic story of survival and the hardships they continuously had to endure in the fight for their life.
So, to further describe this novel
The story is exciting, and the words the author uses are highly intelligent, yet they do not alienate the reader. The atmospheric tension between the characters and the environment is tangible and the desperation that is a constant theme throughout the novel makes the reader feel that they are right beside them as they forage for food and shelter while running from the nefarious inhabitants of the isolated desolate jungle.