The Seaplane on Final Approach: A Novel

A TIME BEST BOOK OF THE SUMMER • A lusty young woman seeks out experience on a remote Alaskan homestead in this erotic and darkly humorous novel

"Rukeyser weaves a dreamlike spell—'Twin Peaks’ by way of ‘Northern Exposure.’" —LA Times

"Fantastic.” —The New York Times

Mira is a loner, a drop out, an obsessive fascinated by the concept of sleaze. She wants two things: to move to Alaska and find the tattooed fisherman that’s the object of her desire. Her single-mindedness takes her to the remote Kodiak Archipelago, where she finds work at a homestead-turned-tourist-lodge offering a carousel of meticulously scripted Alaskan experiences.

But the lodge is failing and, as life on Lavender Island becomes increasingly claustrophobic and strange, Mira’s plans for her future become more elaborate and perverse.

Part meditation on unhinged longing, part biting commentary on eco-tourism and the mythology of the American West, and part yearning portrayal of people at the end of their tether, The Seaplane on Final Approach is wholly original, “a perfect blend of deep, dark humor, sadness, and (of course), adolescent horniness (Literary Hub).”

REBECCA RUKEYSER is the recipient of the inaugural Berlin Senate grant for non-German literature. Her fiction has appeared in such publications as ZYZZYVA, The Massachusetts Review, and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She earned her M.F.A. from the Iowa Writers' Workshop and teaches fiction writing at Bard College Berlin.