Idyllic Pacific Vacation Turns into Decades-Long Adventure: 'Stan's Leap'

SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Jenny and Stan had the all-American life: good careers, a nice apartment and their first baby on the way. To celebrate the impending arrival, the couple decides to take one last vacation before they become parents. The brochure for Henderson Island promised a Polynesian paradise untouched my modernity. However, as "Stan's Leap" (published by iUniverse) by Tom Duerig unfolds, what transpires is beyond what either of them could have imagined.

Stan and Jenny arrive on the Pacific paradise and meet their hosts, Kimo and Nani, as well as the 18 fellow guests. However, a few days after their arrival the island is rocked by a heat wave and strange red lights in the sky. The heat wave is the herald of a gargantuan storm that will come to be known as the "Great Storm." The aftermath of that storm will change all of their lives forever and propel "Stan's Leap" forward.

Soon after the storm passes and life struggles back to normal, Henderson Island's occupants realize that they've become isolated from the outside world. The island's radio doesn't work and the plane that should have come for them is long past overdue. Weeks later, Kimo informs his guests that the reason the radio doesn't work and the plane hasn't come is that there is no one left to come and get them. The inhabitants of the island are the last remnant of humanity. Kimo further explains that the red lights and heat wave were the result of a massive solar flare that has likely left them the Earth's last inhabitants. With no evidence to the contrary, the vacationers come to grips with their new reality.

As the plot of "Stan's Leap" moves forward, readers are witnesses to the struggles of the island's inhabitants as they endeavor to maintain themselves and their hold on their humanity. As the years tick by, the characters in "Stan's Leap" reinvent themselves and create their own society. In the second part of this three-part novel, readers meet Stan and Jenny's son Adam and his girlfriend Mati. Adam and Mati set out on an adventure of their own that will change the lives of Henderson Island's survivors for a second time, finally discovering the truth about the world and their isolation.

The author, Tom Duerig, was born in Rhode Island, and has lived in Pennsylvania, Switzerland, and California. He earned an undergraduate degree in Physics from Lehigh University and his PhD from Carnegie-Mellon University. Dr. Duerig is a scientist and entrepreneur who founded and is now CEO of a medical device company in California's Silicon Valley. While he has written multiple academic works, this is his first novel. He has three grown children and one grandchild. Dr. Duerig and his wife live in the San Francisco Bay Area.

iUniverse is the premier book publisher for emerging, self-published authors. For more information, please visit http://www.iuniverse.com.

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