Product Description

Keith Stewart is an ordinary man. However, one day he is called upon to undertake an extraordinary task. When his sister's boat is wrecked in the Pacific, he becomes trustee for his little niece. In order to save her from destitution he has to embark on a 2,000 mile voyage in a small yacht in inhospitable waters. His adventures and the colorful characters he meets on his journey make this book a marvelous tale of courage and friendship.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #48084 in Books
• Published on: 2009-09-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 320 pages

Review
Something about this author's calm, deliberate style creates unexpected excitement... we are warmed by the justice and sheer pleasure of it Independent Nevil Shute made me yearn for a faithful, plodding, Shute-type of man. I imagined us trekking across the Australian outback, finding a run-down hamlet, and then transforming it together until death or flood parted us The Times

About the Author
Nevil Shute Norway was born on 17 January 1899 in Ealing, London.After attending the Dragon School and Shrewsbury School, he studied Engineering Science at Balliol College, Oxford. He worked as an aeronautical engineer and published his first novel, Marazan, in 1926. In 1931 he married Frances Mary Heaton and they went on to have two daughters. During the Second World War he joined the Royal Navy Volunteer Reserve where he worked on developing secret weapons. After the war he continued to write and settled in Australia where he lived until his death on 12 January 1960. His most celebrated novels include Pied Piper (1942), No Highway (1948), A Town Like Alice (1950) and On the Beach (1957).

Customer Reviews

Words to Live By
This was Neville Shute's final novel, and perhaps derives much of its mood due to this. Best known for the depressing nuclear holocaust story On the Beach, Shute wrote this as a celebration of the simple pleasures in life. The protagonist Keith is an unassuming, married, but childless, middle-aged man living in suburban London (Ealing) with his working wife. He has forsaken a more lucrative engineering career in order to pursue his love of miniature modeling and a very meager income as a columnist for "Miniature Mechanic" magazine. When his sister and brother-in-law die in a shipwreck near Tahiti, he becomes the guardian and trustee for his 10-year-old niece. Next thing you know, Keith, who has never left the country, has to find a way to make his way to a remote Pacific island to recover a box of diamonds that was on the wreck. Shute writes convincingly of the things nautical and engineering Keith encounters on his adventure. Along the way he is aided by a somewhat improbable number of people who know him from his reputation in he world of miniature mechanics. It teeters on being trite and corny, but ultimately works as a celebration of karma. Keith has been a good, selfless man, and so other good, selfless men are willing to help him--and he ends up doing what he loves. At the end of his life, Shute returned to this basic message on how to live and love life, and it works.

Favorite book of all time!
Timeless classic about an extrondinary journey taken by a very ordinary man. Not one of Nevil Shute's more well known novels, but underated in my opinion.

'Keith Stewart' = FJ Camm?
After reading 'Trustee' I had wondered wether Shute had modelled (excuse the pun) the story's hero on the late Frederick Camm - another unassuming technically minded man who wrote on many subjects for many publications (and was known world-wide).

The story itself is well written - like nearly all of Shute's works - but stretches the credulity somewhat in places. The character of Keith Stewart, though believable, is rather too 'stiff-upper-lip' to be totally likeable.

Nevertheless, it is an enjoyable read and rounds out the Shute oeuvre.