In this first book of the unusual fantasy "Collinwoode" series, Collin O'Daurc, a teen-to twenty-something-ish hairstylist with too many girlfriends, suffers a stroke on the job and is promptly swept off to an island-hopping dream-existence that he can never quite figure out. He lands in the lap of long-dead Impressionist painter Paul Gauguin and his never-born daughter, Juane, and is whisked off to jungle adventures with the likes of Loren, a Maori cliff diver/inventor, Balthazar, a hair-covered librarian, Eugene, a Klondike-era tracker/physician, and Tully, a baboon-like monkey the size of a Suburban. Not to mention scores of monsters, cannibals, storms, and the T-Wreckx, a seagoing hostel and twin of the infamous Titanic. Never one to last long in relationships of any sort, Collin finds himself living alongside people whose legendary personality quirks force him to take a close look at his own, and lead him to wonder if he's simply in the throes of karma, or has crossed paths with others from different times simply because they're the only ones who can help him...or vice-versa. Will he ever regain consciousness? And if so, in what dimension and reality? These are the questions dictating Collin's search for answers, which finally come in a form that may cost him the life of a sparring-partner he's come to love, if not actually admire. And in order to earn a return to a "normal" existence, he must deal with and conquer the monsters that lurk in his own subconsciousness, the "killjoys"and seducers who seek to destroy us all.