When a copywriter is stranded on a small island in the Pacific after helping a soft drink commercial shoot, she uncovers a terrible secret that eventually drives her to the brink of insanity. Svoboda's stunning novel, frighteningly mysterious and complex, deals with many themes: a child's accidental death and the guilt a surviving parent must cope with, the inhumanity with which faraway governments often treat indigenous peoples, and the relationship between sex and reproduction in both personal and social contexts.

Clare, an L.A. ad executive, finds herself stranded on a remote island in the South Pacific. Barclay, an enigmatic local leader, cannot tell her when the next boat is coming, nor will he unravel the disturbing mysteries that pervade the island. Why is her hostess, Ngarima, indifferent to the intruder who attempts to rape Clare? Why does Ngarima's son brave the sea in a homemade boat in a desperate attempt to escape the island? And what has happened to the eerily misshapen boy who inhabits the lagoon? Women mob Harry, Clare's fellow castaway, so he has no patience for her growing fears. It is finally the island women - Breasts for Three, Clam Hold, and The Spreader - who reveal a life force gone awry and the terrifying secrets that force Clare to confront what she herself has shut away. Drawing on the author's own experience of Tahitian, Pukapukan, and Marshall Island cultures, the luminous prose of A Drink Called Paradise is haunted by living ghosts, islanders moving in the shadow of the past that we all must account for.