On a small, unnamed coral atoll in the South Pacific, a group of troubled dreamers must face the possibility that the hopes they’ve labored after so single-mindedly might not lead them to the happiness they feel they were promised.

Ann and Richard, an aspiring Los Angeles power couple, are already sensing the cracks in their version of the American dream when their life unexpectedly implodes, leading them to run brashly away from home to a Robinson Crusoe idyll. Dex Cooper, lead singer of the rock band Prospero, is facing his own slide from greatness, experimenting with artistic asceticism while accompanied by his sexy, young, and increasingly entrepreneurial muse, Wende. Loren, the French owner of the resort sauvage, made his own Gauguin-like retreat from the world years before only to find that it has become impossible to disconnect from the modern world. Titi, descendent of Tahitian royalty, worker, and eventual inheritor of the resort, must fashion a vision of the island’s future that includes its indigenous people while her partner, Cooked, is torn between anarchy and lust.

By turns funny and tragic, The Last Good Paradise explores our modern, complex, and often self-contradictory discontents, crafting an exhilarating story about our need to connect in an increasingly networked but isolating world.