Alone on the Shield: A Novel [Paperback]

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.

“Alone on the Shieldis 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 ofThe Knife

“Kirk Landers has written a kind ofDeliveranceset 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 ofThe High DivideandUndiscovered Country