Alone on the Shield: A Novel

by Kirk Landers

Overview

Eric Hoffer Book Award honorable mention

I hope you get drafted and you go to Vietnam and you get shot and you die there!

Those words, spoken in the anger of youth, marked the end of the torrid 1960s college romance of Annette DuBose and Gabe Pender. She would marry a fellow antiwar activist and end up immigrating to Canada. He would fight in Vietnam and come home to build an American Dream kind of life.

Forty years later, they have reconnected and discovered a shared passion: solo canoeing in Ontario’s raw Quetico wilderness. They decide to meet again to catch up on old times, not in a café but on Annette’s favorite island deep in the Quetico wilds.

Though they try to control their expectations for their rendezvous, they both approach the island with a growing realization of the emotional void in their lives and wonder how different everything might have been if they had stayed together. They must overcome challenges just to reach the island. Then they encounter the greatest challenge of all—each other.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781613739914
Publisher:	Chicago Review Press, Incorporated
Publication date:	11/01/2017
Pages:	384
Sales rank:	457,502
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Kirk Landers launched his professional writing career in the US Army, later entering the special-interest and trade magazine worlds. His magazines won more than a hundred awards for journalistic excellence, and he is a member of the Construction Writers Hall of Fame. He lives in the suburbs of Chicago.

Editorial Reviews

"Alone on the Shield is a brilliant, hard look into the mirror of our pasts in which our new, ideal selves break free from their old molds and casts. Landers’s powerful, sweeping journey into the Canadian wilderness takes readers through trials of self-reflection, endurance, and discovery to find what matters most in life—loves, hatreds, and ideal selves. A true joy to read.” —Ross Ritchell, author of The Knife



“Kirk Landers has written a kind of Deliverance set in the wilderness of Canada, though instead of hillbilly horror, the memorable heroes of this novel—a man and woman rediscovering love in late middle age—confront demons of their own making. Rich in suspense, place, and character.” —Lin Enger, author of The High Divide and Undiscovered Country



"Debut novelist Landers clearly knows and loves the Boundary Waters, and he admirably captures the drama and beauty of the wild landscape."—Kirkus Reviews


"Alone on the Shield is tense and dramatic, absorbing from beginning to end, one of those precious tales that manages to be both a page-turner and a thoughtful novel of great depth and resonance."—Booklist


"A compelling mixture of adventure and romance, Alone on the Shield is a tightly focused novel that deftly speaks to growing older and the struggle for understanding."—ForeWord Magazine


“Alone on the Shield. . . engaged me from cover to cover with relatable characters, balanced conflicts, picturesque descriptions and more.” —Boomer Magazine


“ALONE ON THE SHIELD by Kirk Landers is the perfect way to experience an imaginative travel adventure with some exciting anticipation to rile things up a bit.”—The Zest Quest

From the Publisher

2017-09-13
Long-separated college loves reunite in the Canadian Boundary Waters.Gabe Pender has an attitude problem. Let go from his longtime job at a publishing company, he punches his boss in the gut. His wife has left him, and his daughter is estranged. At 60, he's a curmudgeon: when he passes some drunken partiers, he thinks, "it would be better to die than spend time with assholes like that." And his time in the Vietnam War still casts a long shadow across his life, not only in the form of his temper, but also in the form of a woman. Annette Blain, his college sweetheart, left for Canada as a conscientious objector to the war just as Pender was heading over to serve. Now, 40 years later, Pender, an expert canoeist, agrees to meet Annette—coincidentally, also an expert canoeist—for a paddling trip across Quetico Provincial Park in Canada. As Pender winds his way toward Annette through the Boundary Waters, he wonders whether Annette will be another one of his failures or if this will be a welcome renewal of a relationship he's never quite been able to let go of. Debut novelist Landers clearly knows and loves the Boundary Waters, and he admirably captures the drama and beauty of the wild landscape. Pender, though, is rather insufferable company for the duration and is made even more so by the fact that his self-regard seems to grow with each condescending thought he has about all the people who've ruined the world—which is to say, everyone. Unlikable characters can make great fiction, but the book's other characters repeatedly describing Pender in sincerely glowing terms could make readers wonder if we're missing something or if Landers is.A wilderness adventure/romance that might have readers rooting for a capsize.

Kirkus Reviews