Islands in the Stream

The novel follows Thomas Hudson, an American painter, across three distinct periods of his life, tracing his progressive losses and his attempts to hold himself together through work, discipline, and duty. Divided into three parts, "Bimini," "Cuba," and "At Sea," the story moves from peacetime island life through World War II.

In Part I, Thomas Hudson lives alone on Bimini, a small island in the Bahamas, in a sturdy house between the harbor and the Gulf Stream. A successful painter who also earns income from inherited oil leases, he has learned through two failed marriages and years of reckless living to channel his energy into disciplined work. He remains in love with his first wife, the mother of his eldest son, young Tom. His second marriage produced two younger sons, David and Andrew. His houseboy Joseph and Eddy, a capable cook and boatman, manage his solitary domestic life. The three boys are coming for a five-week summer visit.

Before the boys arrive, Thomas Hudson's close friend Roger Davis, a writer and former painter, gets into a confrontation with a belligerent man from a visiting yacht during the Queen's birthday celebration and beats him badly in a one-sided fight on the dock. Afterward, Roger confides that he took pleasure in the violence. He reveals a deeper wound: the drowning of his younger brother when they were boys in Maine. Roger was twelve when their canoe overturned, and he could not save his brother. Thomas Hudson urges Roger to channel his talent into writing a serious novel, and Roger agrees to try.

The three boys arrive and settle into island life. Young Tom is worldly and articulate, with an extraordinary memory for his early childhood in Paris. David, the middle boy, is compared to an otter: brown, self-contained, and a natural underwater swimmer. Andrew, the youngest, is a precocious athlete who carries a dark streak only his father recognizes.

The summer turns dangerous when the boys go goggle-fishing, or spearfishing while wearing goggles on the reef. David is far out when Eddy spots an enormous hammerhead shark cutting toward him. Thomas Hudson fires his rifle from the flying bridge, the boat's raised upper steering platform, but misses. Eddy opens fire with a Thompson submachine gun he has kept hidden aboard, killing the shark and saving David.

Soon after, David hooks a massive broadbill swordfish, and the six-hour fight becomes the central ordeal of the Bimini section. David battles the fish as it sounds deep and strips line nearly to the bare spool. His hands blister and bleed, his feet wear raw against the stern, but he refuses every offer to let someone else take the rod. After six hours, the fish is brought to the surface, but the hook tears free at the last moment and the great swordfish descends out of sight. David later tells the others he could not tell which was him and which was the fish, and that he began to love it more than anything on earth.

In the remaining days, Audrey Bruce, a woman from a visiting yacht, turns out to be Audrey Raeburn, a girl Roger and Thomas Hudson knew years earlier in Paris. She and Roger begin a tentative romance. The boys depart by seaplane, followed by Roger and Audrey. Then a radio message arrives: David and Andrew have been killed with their mother in a motor accident near Biarritz. Thomas Hudson books passage to France, where he discovers that grief cannot be bargained with or cured by anything less than death.

Part II opens during World War II. Thomas Hudson lives at his farm outside Havana, engaged in covert anti-submarine operations along the Cuban coast under the cover of scientific research. His cat Boise, a big black-and-white tom with an almost human attachment to him, suffers visibly each time Thomas Hudson goes to sea. His human connections have narrowed to his crew, his servants, and the bar life of Havana.

At the Floridita, Havana's famous bar, Thomas Hudson reveals that young Tom is dead: a flight lieutenant in Spitfires, British fighter planes, shot down over France. Willie, a crew member with an artificial eye and a sharp tongue, reacts with raw grief, calling Thomas Hudson a "grief hoarder" for keeping the news to himself. Thomas Hudson spends the day drinking with Willie; Henry Wood, a huge and enthusiastic crew member; and Honest Lil, an aging Cuban sex worker who is one of his oldest friends. He tells stories to distract himself from his losses.

Thomas Hudson's first wife, young Tom's mother, arrives unexpectedly at the Floridita in military uniform. She is a famous actress traveling with the United Service Organizations (USO), performing for troops abroad. They drive to the farm, make love, and quarrel with the practiced intimacy of former spouses who still love each other. He has not told her that Tom is dead. She senses it and asks directly, and he confirms it. Then a call from the Embassy orders Thomas Hudson to report immediately. He leaves her at the farm with the cats, the paintings, and the blue envelopes bearing their son's handwriting and censor stamps. She lies on the bed with Boise beside her: "Both of them. Boise, tell me. What are we going to do about it?" (319).

Part III follows Thomas Hudson commanding his disguised patrol boat as it approaches a deserted island where German submariners have massacred the inhabitants. His crew finds nine burned bodies and a dead young German sailor executed by his own comrades. Thomas Hudson deduces that the crew of a lost submarine killed the islanders to prevent them from reporting the Germans' presence.

Thomas Hudson pursues the Germans westward through a chain of keys, running on limited information and a broken radio. He has not slept, drives himself relentlessly, and has stopped caring about his own survival. Ara, a blunt Basque crewman, tells him that his pride must be tempered with intelligence. At a key off Cayo Guillermo, they discover a hidden turtle boat. Peters, the radio operator, demands the Germans' surrender in German. When no one responds, Peters throws a grenade into the main hatch. A hidden German opens fire, killing Peters before Willie drops a grenade on him. The main body of Germans has gone ashore in the surrounding keys.

The ship runs aground in a narrow channel. When the tide refloats it, they push into a final stretch where the Germans open fire from concealed positions. Thomas Hudson is hit three times. His crew destroys the German position with improvised bombs and machine-gun fire. Willie and Ara go in to finish the fight. One German walks out with his hands up, but Ara kills him reflexively before he can surrender.

Thomas Hudson lies dying on the flying bridge as the ship heads for shore. He looks at the sky and the great lagoon he knows he will never paint. Willie says, "I love you, you son of a bitch, and don't die" (446). Thomas Hudson replies, "I think I understand, Willie" (446). Willie answers, "Oh shit. You never understand anybody that loves you" (446).