Jack London in Paradise Book

Jack London.

The name stands for adventure.

Explorer. Social activist. Romantic. Self-educated genius. White Fang. Call of the Wild. Martin Eden. The Sea-Wolf. Generations worldwide have been thrilled by his tales, probably never realizing how true to life they really were. He did not imagine the hardships and brutality of life in the Yukon, on the high seas, or in the back alleys of Oakland. He lived them. Few men were his equal and only one woman ever fully captivated his heart. By the time he was forty, no American was more famous. And in the winter of 1915, the great writer set sail on one last adventure.

But in this story of that adventure, he is being hunted.

Hobart Bosworth — an aging matinee idol and filmmaker — is desperate for one more Jack London picture to save his career. Hollywood machinations have driven a wedge between him and his old friend. He has tracked Jack and his wife, Charmian, from the mysterious ruins of their once-magnificent Wolf House across the Pacific to the volcanic islands of Hawaii. The Jack London he finds here is a man half mad with visions, a man struggling with the ghosts of his past, the erotic temptations of the island paradise, and his own wolflike nature.

Now Hobart's original goal — to save his studio — has become a desperate struggle to save his friend and preserve the icon he has become. With or without Charmian London's help.

A romantic novel of sweeping passions and raw adventure set against an unforgettable, sultry backdrop, Jack London in Paradise vividly imagines the last year in the life of a legendary man nearly everyone knows about, but few actually know.

The Barnes & Noble Review

Paul Malmont's Jack London in Paradise is a perfect combination of biography and literary fiction, with a dash of armchair travel. Focusing on the final year of London's life, Malmont weaves London's troubled history with Hawaii in its first years of annexation by the United States. The novel begins as filmmaker Hobart Bosworth is searching for London, in the hopes that the writer will give him an exclusive screenplay to film, which would save his debt-riddled movie studio. Bosworth finds London in Hawaii, distracted from writing and struggling with his past. London is studying mythology to sort through the anguish of his memories, from the childhood curse supposedly placed on him by a spirit (according to his his mother) to the recent arson at his utopian Beauty Ranch in California. The writer finds solace in Hawaii, where native Hawaiians hold tight to their now illegal customs and to a queen still sitting on her powerless throne. Mainlanders are coming ashore in droves to pillage the land they find so exotic. Both London and the islanders seem dazed in response. Through all of this, Malmont shies away from dramatic moments -- when a sugar plantation field hand is severely burned, his final fate is later alluded to in cagey dialogue. But Malmont is at his best in the quiet moments between characters. The accounts of London's "wave sliding" with Duke Kahanamoku, a legend in his own right, simply sing. Malmont does an excellent job of capturing America's fascination with both London and Hawaii and the eventual exhaustion that so much attention brings. Moreover, he treats Hawaii with care and love -- the moist, warm Hawaiian air is nearly tangible, and the native Hawaiians posses a mystery both Malmont and his hero seem to take pleasure in unraveling. --Melissa Lion