Puka-Puka is a triangular coral reef, some seven miles in circumference with three islands. It frames a lagoon so clear that one can see the coral forests some ten fathoms below. It is the most remote, and probably the most beautiful, of all the Cook Islands.
In a quirky small town, residents are outraged by the Massachusetts government's decision to replace their beloved wooden bridge with a concrete structure, prompting them to consider secession. Seventy-two-year-old Jessica Stoddard documents the unfolding events, though her account is colored by her infatuation with the much younger rebel leader, Toby Auberon, who has returned to perfect his invention. As tensions escalate from bureaucratic bullying to armed occupation, the story unfolds as a humorous and poignant tale of rebellion and community spirit.
Kip--a New York jazz pianist whose career was cut short by a neurological disease--returns from a failed suicide attempt with a vivid, detailed memory of his journey through the afterlife. Resembling the world as he knows it, but unlimited in space and time, it's unlike any eternity he has contemplated. Its residents are those who choose not to reincarnate, which would erase all memory of who they once were. Kip has a quest: to find his beloved Lucy, a yoga teacher who shared his apartment for years but died of leukemia before he took his own life. Is she still here? Has she waited for him, or "gone back" to become someone else? In his odyssey across centuries and locales (Istanbul to the Marquesas Islands, India to Oklahoma and New Guinea) to find her, Kip is guided by Walt Whitman--who urges him to write this memoir on his return.