Lewis Robinson is the author of Officer Friendly and Other Stories and Water Dogs, and he is the winner of a Whiting Award, the PEN Oakland/Josephine Miles Award, and a Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. His writing has appeared in Sports Illustrated, The New York Times Book Review, and on the National Public Radio program Selected Shorts. He teaches at the University of Maine at Farmington and lives in Portland, Maine with his family.

"In Lewis Robinson's riveting new novel The Islanders, his eighteen-year-old protagonists are...brave and smart and decent and resourceful. Also, wildly entertaining. Reader, you'll enjoy every minute of their company."
--Richard Russo, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Empire Falls and Nobody's Fool

"The Islanders is at once an engrossing story and a timely, urgent warning: what will happen when the one percent decide to pull up the rope ladder behind them?"
--Kate Christensen, author of The Astral, The Last Cruise, and Welcome Home, Stranger

"Robinson is at his expansive best, reaching into a fraught American moment while retaining his gift for creating endearing characters... I was enthralled from first page to last, and couldn't wait to get back to the island."
--Monica Wood, author of When We Were the Kennedys, The One-in-a-Million Boy, and How to Read a Book

"Walt McNamara is the young male narrator of our moment: Walt's journey...is so sensitively, acutely, and bravely drawn, you will never forget him."
--Caitlin Shetterly, author of Pete and Alice in Maine

"Following a group of high school oddballs shunted to a Maine island for a 'leadership' program, the novel is an inventive and consistently surprising update to Lord of the Flies for the United States. And it's a credit to Robinson that the teenagers at the center of the novel sound and feel like real teens -- it's a voice most adult authors struggle to capture, but he has knocked it out of the park. You won't soon forget Walt, Aubrey or Tess, and they all make the book tough to put down until you're through."
--Josh Christie, The Portland Press Herald

"Robinson balances Walt's fraught and tender coming of age -- his loving relationship with his mom; trying to understand parents' choices, failures, flaws; the errors made as one comes into one's own; and he's especially good in capturing the heated pangs of a big crush -- with thriller action. There's pleasurable intimacy with the landscape... Robinson nails the prickly fear-pleasure of moving through woods at night."
-- Nina McLaughlin, The Boston Globe

"Walt McNamara and his (mostly) good-hearted peers find themselves navigating somewhere between Lord of the Flies and a group of relentless motivational speakers. Robinson takes 'rites of passage' to new levels. The Islanders is one, great, unputdownable
novel."
--George Singleton, author of The Curious Lives of Nonprofit Martyrs

"[Robinson] constructs a rich world of substantial characters caught in the muddled aspirations of young adulthood. A thrilling story of teenage survival and camaraderie."--Kirkus Reviews

Publisher: Islandport Press

Pub date: 2024-10-01

Length: 320 pages