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ESCAPE TO LAST MAN PEAK

By Nile SAULTER

Book adaptation - Development 2024

In a land ravaged by ' The Sickness' , desolation and despair, where adults have become the enemy. 10 orphans find hope and strength in each other as they make the perilous journey to Last Man Peak.

- Year of production
- 2024
- Genres
- Book adaptation, Action/Adventure, Drama
- Countries
- JAMAICA
- Languages
- ENGLISH, CREOLE
- Director(s)
- Nile SAULTER
- Writer(s)
- Tanya BATSON-SAVAGE
- Producer(s)
- Analisa CHAPMAN (Have A Bawl Productions), Tanya BATSON-SAVAGE (HAVE A BAWL PRODUCTIONS)
- Synopsis
- Fearful and traumatized, 11-year-old Nellie, her friend Wuss-Wuss (a lonely, young albino) and eight other orphans are abandoned at Sunrise Home and left to face the looming possibility of starvation. Worse yet 'The Sickness', a viral illness that has already killed hundreds of thousands, mainly adults, draws closer. After the local hospital is torched, and with it all hope that they will be rescued, a new threat of being taken to work camps arises. With death by illness, overwork or starvation as their options, the orphans decide to flee, but they have neither family, friends, nor anywhere to go. Wuss-Wuss, the one they usually ignore, has a solution - his old home, high in the rocky hills at the other end of the island - Last Man Peak. But the cross-country trek is a terrifying prospect.
  
  Jimmy, the group's natural leader for both his size and bravery, alongside a strong willed Pauline, decides to lead the group. Though they try to be surrogate parents, little more than children themselves, Jimmy and Pauline soon realize they cannot protect the others from the encroaching violence from a group of murderous religious fanatics. Increasingly, they rely on Wuss-Wuss' drive and knowledge of plants and the outdoors to keep them going. Yet, despair threatens to splinter the group as they go deeper into the treacherous hinterlands. Pushed to the brink, Nellie is forced to choose between succumbing to fear or saving two young lives, and learns to find her inner strength and agency.
  
  With one of the twins shot, the orphans find respite in the home of the mystical Ras Isaiah. Yet, the respite doesn't last and the orphans, tapping into bravery they didn’t know they had, use their wits and ingenuity to escape a brutal gang only to face an angry, turbulent river - triggering Nellie and Ronald's phobias. But this new Nellie, and an emboldened Wus Wus, are willing to stand for family, regardless of the consequences, and risk the way across to the safety of Last Man Peak and the brink of the new future that awaits them.