1049 Club by Kim Pritekel

Publisher:                   P.D. Publishing

Think "Castaway" with six survivors instead of one.

On its way to Milan, Italy, Flight 1049 crashes into the Atlantic Ocean and it's believed that three passengers who are rescued right away are the only survivors.  Six people manage to make it to an island however – a famous author, a gay attorney, a bossy veterinarian, a teenager who thinks her mother died in the crash, the owner of a coffee bistro and a man who could not save his wife.  As they struggle to survive until someone can rescue them, the world believes they are all dead and moves on.  Everyone that is except the attorney's partner, who is convinced that he's still alive and rallies some of the family members to support him in continuing a search after the authorities give up.  Spending more than a year on the island will force the survivors to confront issues about themselves and the lives they left behind.  Rescue forces them to deal with who they have become.  The old saying, "You can't go home again" may be right.

Pritekel tells several stories in this book.  There is the story of how the people on the island interact with each other interspersed with the stories of their families and the different ways in which they cope with their grief.  The most interesting part of the book though is when the survivors return to their homes.  Their families have adapted to life without them and they have come home different people than when they left.  Each survivor struggles to bring his or her new life into sync with the old one and they aren't all successful.  That's refreshing because not every story has a happy ending.

This is a well told story.  Anyone familiar with the movie "Castaway" will see the obvious influence, but it's not the same story.  Pritekel doesn't mind writing a longer book, so the reader will have plenty of opportunity to get to know the characters, although some of the scenes could have been deleted without injuring the story.  There is one section where one character keeps a diary that seems totally unnecessary to the plot.  Anyone who wants a book that tells an engaging story and moves quickly enough that the length is easy to forget will want to join the 1049 Club.