The Last Resort: A Novel

A Manhattan corporate attorney, with career and marriage in turmoil, drives desperately away from all he knows to an out-of-season resort on Long Island. As he struggles to put his life back together, he meets a surfer, a fisherman, and a Native American woman fighting to preserve ancestral land threatened with development, a fight that eventually endangers her life. The tension between past and present comes alive as he finds new meaning in life through the natural world and social justice for a long-oppressed race of people.

The novel takes place on the eastern end of Long Island, the ancestral home of the Montauks, a Native American tribe. Historical characters come to life in a battle to preserve their land.

“The Last Resort depicts the spiritual journey of a broken man who replenishes his spirit and finds his true self in reconnecting with the natural world. In scenes of surfing in the wild ocean, the blossoming of a romance, and the struggles of the native Montauketts to reclaim their ancestral land, Liss captures the essence of Montauk in all its raw beauty. With luminous prose embedded with philosophical ruminations and Native American truths, this haunting, dreamlike narrative will linger long in the reader’s consciousness.” — Celine Keating, author of Layla and Play for Me, and co-editor of On Montauk: A Literary Celebration

“In this narrative of the spiritual journey undertaken by an exhausted, emotionally drained city lawyer, Kay Liss introduces the insightful perspectives of a cast of memorable characters-Native Americans of Montauk, a young surfer, an old fisherman. Their stories are deftly woven together with the writings of renowned philosophers and conservationists, and set in a stunning, elemental landscape at the tip of Long Island. The result is a probing and thought-provoking look at how we can become separated from the natural world, and how we can begin to find our way back to the freshness, fulfillment, and freedom it offers once we realize where we belong.” — Jayne Gordon, public historian, educator, former director of the Thoreau Society

“The Last Resort is a lyrical ode to the power of nature to heal. The story takes the reader on a fascinating exploration of the history and culture of the Montaukett people and their ties to the land.” — Kay Hardy Campbell, author of A Caravan of Brides: A Novel of Saudi Arabia