Overview
After Daniel Hays and his father built a twenty-five-foot boat and sailed it around Cape Horn, he thought he'd finally put his wanderlust to rest. He went back to school, bought a house, took a job, got married.
But as it turned out, in the real world Daniel Hays felt lost. So he took his love for the sea and his need to escape civilization and pushed it further: he bought an island off the coast of Nova Scotia; built a tiny house; packed up his wife and stepson, two dogs, and three boatloads of supplies; and moved there.
This is the story of fulfilling a fantasy: to live by your own rules and your own wits. And Daniel Hays, as readers of My Old Man and the Sea will remember, is well equipped to do both. He generates electricity from solar power and a terrifying windmill, funnels rainwater for their showers, creates a toilet seat out of a whale vertebra, strings their bed up on pulleys so that by day it can be lifted out of the way. For him, every morning is a wonder and every storm a blood-coursing thrill.
But while Daniel loves this permanent boy's life, his wife longs for the life they left behind, and his spirited stepson is feeling isolated. Soon, their Swiss Family Robinson existence becomes a vision only Daniel can see.
Funny, tender, and fascinating, filled with the details of an unconventional life, this is the story of how the Hays family lived on Whale Island, and how, finally, they had to leave.
Synopsis
As chronicled in the bestselling book My Old Man and the Sea, the thirst for living an unconventional life led Daniel Hays to sail around Cape Horn with his father in a boat they built themselves. Thinking his wanderlust satisfied, Hays married and settled down, only to find himself restless for adventure once again. On Whale Island tells the story of how he packed up three boatloads of supplies, his wife, stepson, and two dogs and moved to a remote island off the coast of Nova Scotia, fulfilling a lifelong fantasy of escaping from the confines of civilization and living by his wits.
Publishers Weekly
In his previous book, My Old Man and the Sea, Hays and his father built a sailing boat and navigated around Cape Horn. Theirs was a heartfelt tale of adventure, family and the good old days. Hoping to pull those same heartstrings here, Hays places himself in a Walden-like wilderness. Bored with convention and surviving on diminishing royalty checks, Hays decides to move his family wife, stepson, dogs and all to the middle of nowhere for a year. Handily, he already owns a 50-acre wilderness called Whale Island, just off the coast of Nova Scotia and the perfect venue for such an enterprise. The text chronicles those 365 days (wife Wendy refused any more) and is as self-conscious as the move itself, comprising Hays's condescending accounts of his efforts to live deliberately, Thoreau-style, despite the objections of the Tupperware and latt -loving Wendy. Her own writings, and those of his son, are peppered throughout. Not that Hays thinks he is perfect but he casts himself so enthusiastically as the wronged Woody Allen or John Kennedy Toole hero, he seems a self-perpetuating stereotype. (June 7) Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information.