Vance Nolan designed and created Eagle’s Talon, a series of twelve floating upscale housing units on the beautiful Rondeau River. The first unit has been built and occupied when a sinkhole gives way underneath the support beams that hold it into place. Then, rains and floods cut the survivors off from land and they become stranded in his floating aluminum fortress.
Vance wants to stay and wait for rescue while financial developer Tony Dean wants to escape from their isolation. It’s resident and single mom Danielle Clement who finds herself stuck in the middle of the group of survivors unsure of how best to protect her son Simeon.
Soon power failure, unnatural darkness, explosions and a lack of supplies force the terrified residents into finding solutions. While everyone else attempts escape, Vance is certain that God has told him to stay strong and stay put, a theory further complicated by Simeon’s mysterious sightings of something swimming underwater.
“In this watery world where everyone’s secrets will eventually come to light, salvation may mean more than just getting out alive.”
To Stay Or To Go
The plot in Afloat is fairly straightforward as detailed in the book descriptions except that there is an added element of apocalyptic cataclysm that is important to be prepared for in this book. The floods, rain, and darkness are just the symptoms that the survivors first see of things in a world gone terribly bad.
What they don’t describe in the synopsis is the depth of characters that Ms. Healy involves in her work. Danielle, Vance, Tony, Zeek, Simeon, and the others aboard Eagle’s Talon all have a complicated back story and different motivations that lend to true intrigue in the story. It was the focus on their individual redemption through struggles in selfishness, forgiveness, love, and several other human failures that really drove the book.
There is a great spiritual aspect of this story, Vance and Zeek are believers and their faith in God pit them against the more selfish and unbelieving characters who are only out for themselves. Though some of the characters have questionable backgrounds and make even more debatable decisions the book on the whole was clean and overall encouraging in the end. Forgiveness and faith reign as main themes throughout the book.
The love story in Afloat is more about how God loves his people than the actual romance that goes on. However, I personally enjoyed the fledgling romance that built up deliciously slowly through the narrative.
You Might Like This Book If:
1. You enjoy contemporary fiction. While this is technically science fiction with a survival bent apocalyptic taste, it reads for the majority of the book like contemporary fiction. Characters have jobs and are focused on much more in their lives than just finding food, water and shelter to survive.
2. You are a Believer looking for some interesting Christian literature with depth or a seeker looking for a few life answers. While the theology presented in Afloat may not save millions of souls, it is an encouraging and inspirational reading.
3. You are looking for a more poetic and descriptive read. Ms. Healy’s writing is much more complicated and thought provoking than your typical novel- though it takes some getting used to – and in the end is well worth the extra effort to read.
Concluding, Afloat is the in-depth and spiritually sound read for someone looking for fiction beyond the basic conversion or love search type of story.