Perils of Paradise

Perils of Paradise is a collection of stories about people who have encountered nature's fury and survived. Whether by skill, luck or just plain grit, they cheated nature and the powerful forces that might have defeated them. Interviews with survivors and their rescuers reveal the skills and determination of people who fought nature and won: a young woman washed out to sea by the 1946 tsunami that devastated Laupahoehoe; a young man rescued by lifeguards from a sea cave on O'ahu; a bird surveyor carried out of a lava crack hundreds of feet deep on the Big Island; a surfer who lost his foot to a shark on Kaua'i; a commercial fisherman whose plane went down between O'ahu and Moloka'i; a kayaker adrift for days on the ocean south of the Big Island. In reporting details of the victims' ordeals, Beamish provides insights into why these people survived when others in similar circumstances have not.