Deep in the heart of the Caribbean sea, a battle is being fought between man and giant.

Bequia – a volcanic speck of an island in the Lesser Antilles – finds itself in crisis: Chinese-backed infrastructure now stretches from Jamaica to Trinidad, and US developers are following behind with their own luxury resorts. For former fishermen and port workers Nico, Junior, Baby, and Eustace, whale-hunting isn’t just about preserving tradition: it’s about staying afloat.

The man they sail with is Bruce Ollivierre, local hero and preternatural master of the sea, whose family has hunted whales for generations. In The Last Whale Hunter, we join Ollivierre and his crew of economic migrants as they do battle against millionaire environmentalists, crumbling ocean ecosystems, and an ancient foe five hundred times their size.

But with modern empires carving up the Caribbean and just a few days left of the season, Ollivierre must land a whale in order to bring in enough money to keep his people housed and fed. All eyes turn to the 2025 Easter Regatta, where a final, high-risk hunt unfolds in full view of locals, tourists, and Louise Mitchell, the island’s most powerful anti-whaling crusader, hell-bent on shutting Ollivierre down for good. Failure could mean death for Ollivierre and his men – and the end of whaling on Bequia altogether.

Evocatively told and astonishing to the very end, The Last Whale Hunter is a modern parable of survival and endurance against all odds.

Justin Vibbert is a model, actor, journalist and English instructor at the City University of New York. After years of crime and political reporting for newspapers across the country, he became an embedded freelance journalist profiling the lives of vice criminals. His embedded reporting work inspired the Off-Broadway play Royal Oak, now in development as a limited TV series. The Last Whale Hunter is his debut book.

© 2027 Justin Vibbert (P) 2027 DK Audio