Zander's Island

Seventeen year old Zander Hua from Tacoma is excited to help his dad transport an expensive yacht from Seattle to Hawaii for a retired software executive named Estevan. Zander invites his girlfriend Jenna along for the journey, and she brings her cat, Mr. Jackson. Several days after heading into open ocean, Zander falls asleep on deck under the stars but wakes up when someone removes his safety harness and throws him overboard. Suddenly, he finds himself alone a thousand miles from any land with nothing but the clothes he has on, his cell phone and a pack of chewing gum, both of which are concealed in a Ziplock bag. The night sky lights up in the distance. The yacht is going up in flames. After treading water for most of the night, Zander decides he can struggle no longer. But just as he is about to let himself drown, he hears a cry and thinks it must be Jenna. He follows the cry and finds that it is not coming from Jenna but from Mr. Jackson who has climbed on top of a native American dugout canoe. Estevan had been transporting the canoe on the yacht, he said, to be displayed at his summer home in Hawaii. Zander doesn’t know how the capsized canoe and the cat got there, but he gets it righted and finally climbs inside with Mr. Jackson.

The next day, Zander begins to notice pieces of trash floating around him and recalls a school project he did during his freshman year about the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. He starts pulling in all kinds of trash, including fishing nets, Styrofoam cups, straws, bags, bottles: anything he can use to help him survive. He collects rain water in a Perrier bottle that was floating next to his canoe. After collecting more bottles, he makes solar stills. He tries to catch fish with the nets he has found and ends up snagging a small shark. Needing a place for the leftovers of the shark, he makes a raft, which he refers to as his island, from the flotsam. The blood, however, attracts a much larger shark, and the antique canoe cracks and sinks. Zander is left alone on his floating island of flotsam.

While Zander struggles to survive, Jenna is facing her own challenges. Estevan has taken her with him in his life raft and has called on his fellow drug smugglers to pick them up. Jenna must use her strength and cunning to avoid being sold into the sex trade. Told in first person from Zander’s point of view, this is the story of how both Zander and Jenna fight for survival on the high seas.