Recently divorced and made redundant from his job, Julian Crosby needs a break from reality. That's why he's gone to Hawaii...

If his personal circumstances had been different-if he were simply on a two-week vacation in Maui with his now former wife-then he surely would have laughed and said "no" to the outrageous offer from the funny-looking Hawaiian wearing a loud tropical shirt with an equally loud, not to mention obnoxious, blue and yellow parrot named Buenaventura perched upon his shoulder to buy a rundown boat called Scoundrel.

But that was then and this is now... Or is it?

Meanwhile, sixty years ago, Amelia Earhart is getting ready for her much publicized flight around the world. Is this daring adventure to be her final flight, her swan song? Or is she actually on a reconnaissance mission for President Roosevelt? And what does her ill-fated flight have to do with Julian, his innocent Hawaiian holiday and his newly-acquired boat? As Buenaventura reveals, "Only time will tell" as their two worlds unexpectedly and impossibly collide.

In this award-winning novel a weekend sailor shipwrecked on an uncharted atoll in the South Seas eventually discovers the island's only other human inhabitant-a woman who bears an uncanny resemblance to 1930s lost flying ace Amelia Earhart.