The Last to Drown Summary, Characters and Themes

The Last to Drown by Noelle W. Ihli is a survival thriller built around grief,
isolation, and a terrifying crime hidden beneath an accepted story. Kaia joins a remote women’s rafting trip while still struggling with the death of her husband, Parker, only to discover that the route passes through the site of an infamous massacre. 

What begins as an attempt to reconnect with life becomes a fight for survival when the group’s safeguards disappear and a killer begins hunting them through the wilderness. The novel combines physical danger with Kaia’s private battle over whether she still wants a future after devastating loss.

Summary

Seven years before Kaia’s rafting trip, twenty-year-old river guide Aspen wakes at the Camas Creek campsite when someone approaches her tent in the middle of the night. The stranger refuses to leave, forces his way inside, and fatally attacks her, establishing the violence that will later become known as the Camas Creek massacre.

Years later, Kaia arrives for a five-day women’s rafting retreat on the Middle Fork of the Garnet River. She had originally planned to take the trip with her husband, Parker, to celebrate their thirtieth birthdays, but Parker died after becoming trapped in a narrow cave, leaving Kaia unable to fully reconnect with ordinary life.

Kaia meets guides Macy, Gracie, Josh, and the inexperienced Bryan, who has already earned the mocking nickname “Flip-Flop.” Among the guests are Deborah, Allie, Imani, Pam, Nikki, Beth, and several other women, and true-crime enthusiast Allie quickly raises the subject of Camas Creek and the man supposedly responsible, Kellen Stroop.

The guides are clearly uncomfortable discussing the massacre, but curiosity eventually wins. Around the campfire, Josh explains that Kellen was believed to have murdered fifteen people during a rafting trip seven years earlier, leaving seventeen-year-old Leo Marsden as the sole survivor.

According to the accepted account, Leo survived by hiding beneath his mother’s body before attacking Kellen with an oar and drowning him with a rescue rope. Yet the crime never fully made sense because several victims had injuries that could not easily be explained by a single knife-wielding attacker, including missing hands, severe abdominal wounds, and decapitations.

The discussion becomes even more unsettling when Bryan displays the large knife he carries as a guide. Its camouflage-patterned handle and pearl crosses make it look remarkably similar to the weapon associated with Kellen, although Bryan claims he bought it without knowing about the resemblance.

That night, Kaia dreams about Parker guiding her through dangerous water. He gives her strange instructions about keeping her head down, letting the paddles work, and rowing hard, but she wakes when a scream sounds through the camp.

The scream comes from Allie, who suffers night terrors connected to the emotional strain of failed IVF treatments. Later, Kaia wakes again and hears someone quietly moving near the shoreline and manipulating the rafting equipment, but she assumes a guide is responsible and eventually returns to sleep.

The next morning, the guides discover that their satellite phone is missing. Everyone denies taking it, an extensive search produces nothing, and Kaia realizes the sounds she heard during the night were probably connected to the disappearance.

The situation is especially disturbing because the satellite phone from the original Camas Creek trip also vanished. Unable to return upstream, the group continues deeper into the isolated canyon without a dependable way to contact emergency services.

During the journey, Kaia begins rediscovering sensations she has barely allowed herself to feel since Parker died. Surviving a dangerous rapid gives her an unexpected sense of exhilaration, even as memories of Parker remain present in almost everything she sees.

Another disaster follows when two large containers of drinking water fall from Macy’s gear raft and break against the rocks. Several passengers are also thrown into the river, and Kaia briefly believes she will drown before remembering the survival position taught by the guides.

By the time the group reaches Camas Creek, everyone is exhausted, cold, and dehydrated. Kaia helps organize the camp and draws strength from memories of how Parker used to turn miserable adventures into stories they could laugh about later.

That night, the old massacre appears to begin again. A scream wakes the camp, Gracie is found dead, another person is attacked inside a collapsing tent, and the guests panic as they attempt to escape toward the rafts.

Kaia sees Bryan fighting Josh and initially believes Bryan has saved her. Bryan claims Josh attacked him, but his calm behavior and refusal to release the two bloody knives make Kaia realize the truth: Bryan is the attacker.

Josh survives long enough to tackle Bryan and give Kaia a chance to escape, but Bryan kills him. Kaia reaches a raft with Macy, Allie, Pam, and Deborah, while Bryan launches a gear raft and follows them into the darkness.

The survivors now face Anvil Falls without enough guides and with one overloaded raft ahead of them. As they race through the violent water, Kaia sees passengers in the first raft suddenly thrown backward even though no visible obstacle has struck them.

Remembering an accident involving one of Parker’s friends, Kaia recognizes the danger: razor-sharp wire has been stretched across the river. She warns the women in her raft to duck, but Macy is positioned too high and is struck before disappearing into the water.

Many women in the first raft are killed by the wire, including Beth, whose death devastates Deborah. Kaia, Allie, Pam, and Deborah are left without a guide, while Bryan emerges from the rapid behind them, calmly pursuing them as though their deaths are inevitable.

The women stop long enough to rescue Imani, whose arm has been severed near the elbow by the wire. Pam uses her veterinary experience to improvise a tourniquet, while Bryan approaches slowly and openly enjoys watching the group struggle to remain alive.

Kaia discovers that Bryan is far more skilled on the river than he pretended to be. By tricking him into entering a difficult rapid first, the women follow his route through the safest water, confirming that his apparent incompetence during the earlier days was an act.

Allie then explains a disturbing theory connected to the original massacre. An online account called OneSadRealm had posted violent material related to Camas Creek, and its name appeared suspiciously close to an anagram of Leo Marsden.

Further evidence suggested that Leo’s wounds during the original killings were shallow and possibly self-inflicted. Reports about his earlier behavior, his resentment of others, and inconsistencies in the accepted account created the possibility that Kellen Stroop had been framed by the supposed survivor.

Bryan finally confirms the truth himself: he is Leo Marsden. Seven years earlier, Leo murdered the rafting group, killed Kellen, injured himself, and invented the story that transformed him into the heroic survivor while Kellen received responsibility for crimes Leo considered his own achievement.

Leo has returned because he wants recognition. His second massacre is designed not merely to kill another group but to reproduce his earlier methods and finally claim public credit for both attacks.

The survivors enter another dangerous rapid and their raft becomes trapped before flipping. Kaia, Deborah, Pam, Imani, and Allie become scattered, while Leo approaches with full control of his gear raft.

Kaia realizes she can protect the others only by drawing Leo away. She deliberately insults him about the humiliations he endured while pretending to be Bryan, knowing his ego will make it difficult for him to ignore ridicule.

Leo follows her at first but recognizes the strategy and turns back toward the others. Kaia, exhausted and emotionally broken, briefly considers surrendering herself to the river before the instinct to survive forces her to keep fighting.

During another near-drowning experience, Kaia imagines Parker telling her that she has been holding her breath since his death. She finally understands that continuing to love him does not require her to reject her own life.

Kaia is unexpectedly rescued by Allie, Deborah, Pam, Imani, and Macy, who survived the razor wire. Macy had climbed back toward Camas Creek, recovered another gear raft and supplies, and eventually found the other women after attacking Leo with an oar.

With Macy guiding again, the survivors learn that Leo is racing toward Splinter Ridge, an unrunnable Class Six rapid near the final takeout. Every rafting group must leave the river there and use a portage trail, meaning Leo can wait on land and force the women into a predictable position.

Kaia eventually interprets Parker’s repeated advice about letting the paddles work. She proposes creating human-shaped decoys from paddles, life jackets, clothing, and bags so Leo will believe all six women remain inside the raft as it approaches Splinter Ridge.

Macy, Pam, Deborah, and the injured Imani secretly enter the river and head toward the portage trail. Kaia and Allie remain hidden behind the decoy raft, using ropes and their bodies to slow it while allowing Leo to watch six false silhouettes drift toward his final trap.

The current grows stronger as the raft nears the deadly drop. Kaia and Allie hold on as long as possible to give the others more time, then release the boat and swim desperately toward the canyon wall.

From the overlook, Leo fires arrows into the decoys before realizing he has been fooled. Kaia and Allie survive hidden beneath him while the empty raft is destroyed at Splinter Ridge.

Leo races toward the portage and corners Macy, Pam, Deborah, and Imani. Kaia and Allie follow, and Allie strikes Leo in the head with a thrown rock, although Leo still manages to fire arrows that seriously wound Deborah and Allie.

The final struggle occurs beside Leo’s inflatable kayak. When he jumps onto it, Macy deliberately destabilizes the small craft, and Kaia, Pam, and Macy attack him together after he falls into the water.

Despite being cut by Leo’s knife, Kaia continues fighting. The women finally hold him underwater until he stops resisting, and Leo dies in the same river where his first massacre occurred.

Kaia and Pam use the kayak to reach the final takeout and summon help. Macy, Deborah, Allie, and Imani all survive their injuries, although each faces a difficult recovery.

Six months later, the survivors remain closely connected. Kaia still suffers nightmares and carries a physical scar, but she has started returning to ordinary life rather than living entirely inside Parker’s death.

When she finally opens Parker’s old adventure bag, she discovers a letter he wrote in case he died before her. His words assure Kaia that their love remains true regardless of what happens after death, giving her the reassurance she spent years trying to find through signs, visions, and questions about the afterlife.

Kaia no longer needs certainty about whether Parker’s voice on the river was supernatural, psychological, or simply an expression of everything he taught her. She accepts that grief and love can remain part of her without requiring her to surrender the rest of her life, and she chooses to stay.

Characters

Kaia

Kaia is the emotional and narrative center of The Last to Drown, beginning the story as a woman who is physically alive but uncertain about how much she wants to participate in life. Parker’s death has altered her understanding of danger so completely that she sometimes looks at potentially fatal situations with disturbing indifference, believing that the worst possible event has already happened to her.

Her rafting trip gradually forces that numbness into conflict with her instinct for survival. The exhilaration she experiences after surviving difficult water becomes one of the earliest signs that a part of her still wants sensation, connection, and a future, even if she has not yet admitted it to herself.

Kaia also develops into the group’s strongest strategic thinker. She notices patterns in Leo’s behavior, uses his ego against him, turns his river knowledge into a survival tool, creates the decoy plan, and repeatedly chooses to protect others even when doing so places her in greater danger.

Her greatest transformation, however, is internal. Kaia finally admits her anger toward Parker for dying and recognizes that she has treated continuing to live as a kind of betrayal, but her imagined conversations with him help her separate love from self-destruction.

By the end, Kaia does not erase her grief or stop loving Parker. She instead accepts that mourning him and wanting a future can exist together, making her decision to “stay” the clearest expression of her growth.

Parker

Parker is dead before the central events begin, yet he remains one of the most influential characters in the novel because Kaia continues to interpret the world through her memories of him. Their marriage was built around affection, shared adventure, humor, and the expectation of a long future together, making his sudden death especially destructive to her sense of identity.

His death in a Utah cave also shapes the way Kaia responds to confinement, drowning, helplessness, and bodily danger. Many of her worst moments on the river trigger memories of knowing Parker was trapped somewhere she could not reach him.

Parker’s apparent voice becomes a recurring presence during extreme danger. He gives Kaia cryptic instructions that later prove useful, warns her about hazards, challenges her attempts to surrender, and ultimately tells her that she has been emotionally holding her breath since his death.

The book deliberately leaves the nature of this presence unresolved. Parker may be a supernatural guide, a manifestation of Kaia’s survival instincts, or the mental expression of lessons and memories she already carries, and the uncertainty matters less than the effect he has on her.

His final letter completes his role without requiring an answer about the afterlife. It allows Kaia to understand that Parker’s love remains meaningful because it changed her, not because she can prove that he continues to exist somewhere beyond death.

Leo Marsden / Bryan “Flip-Flop”

Leo Marsden is the central antagonist of The Last to Drown, and his most disturbing characteristic is the degree of patience behind his violence. For most of the rafting trip, he performs the identity of Bryan, an awkward and incompetent new guide who becomes an easy target for jokes and hazing.

His humiliation serves two purposes. It makes the others underestimate him, and it also gives Leo additional resentment to use as justification for the contempt he already feels toward people he considers more socially successful or accepted.

Once his disguise is exposed, his earlier mistakes are reinterpreted as deliberate acts. The missing satellite phone, destroyed water supply, suspicious equipment failures, and poor guiding all appear to have been part of a carefully constructed attempt to isolate and weaken the group.

Leo’s psychological motive is inseparable from recognition. He is furious that Kellen Stroop became famous as the Camas Creek killer because Leo sees the massacre as his personal achievement and believes another man received credit for his work.

His cruelty is therefore performative as well as murderous. He wants victims to understand his superiority, wants witnesses to know who he is, and repeatedly turns survival into a game because control and acknowledgment matter to him as much as killing.

His greatest weakness is his ego. Kaia exploits his inability to tolerate ridicule, and his certainty that the women cannot outthink him causes him to underestimate their cooperation until their combined resistance finally kills him.

Allie

Allie initially appears to be defined by her fascination with true crime and her extensive knowledge of the Camas Creek case. Her persistent questions make the other guests uneasy, especially once details of the old massacre begin resembling events happening during their own journey.

Her interest, however, is not presented as simple entertainment. Allie has spent significant time participating in an online community devoted to analyzing the case, and she had even defended Leo against people who suspected that he might have been the real murderer.

This history gives Allie a severe burden of guilt once Bryan is revealed as Leo. She believes that she should have recognized him or taken the online suspicions more seriously, even though there was no reasonable way for her to know that the accepted account of the massacre was false.

Her personal vulnerability also becomes clearer when she admits that her night terrors began after failed IVF treatments. That disclosure shows that her fear and emotional pain existed before Leo’s attack and gives depth to a character who might otherwise have been reduced to the group’s crime expert.

Allie proves courageous repeatedly. She remains with Kaia during the decoy plan, survives freezing water without a life jacket, strikes Leo with a thrown rock when the others are trapped, and continues thinking about the group even after being seriously wounded.

Macy

Macy begins as a capable and energetic river guide whose professionalism is sometimes hidden beneath the casual humor of rafting culture. Her knowledge of the river becomes essential once the trip turns into a survival crisis.

She had already sensed that something about Bryan was wrong during guide training. Macy noticed that his incompetence sometimes seemed intentional and warned Adrian that he might not be suitable, but her concerns were dismissed.

Her survival at Anvil demonstrates extraordinary physical endurance. After being struck by the wire and disappearing from the raft, she survives against the canyon wall, makes her way back upstream, finds another gear raft, collects supplies, and travels through the night until she reaches the other survivors.

Macy’s return changes the group’s chances dramatically because she brings both river expertise and renewed hope. Even while badly injured, she continues guiding, planning, and placing herself between Leo and the women whenever possible.

Her role in Leo’s final defeat is especially fitting. A lesson from the humiliating guide-training “Fight Night” becomes useful when she destabilizes the kayak beneath him, turning an earlier piece of rafting culture into a practical survival tactic.

Deborah

Deborah is one of the first guests to form an easy connection with Kaia. She is warm, observant, and sympathetic, particularly when she recognizes the significance of Kaia’s wedding ring and understands that Parker is dead.

Her relationship with her sister Beth becomes central once the razor-wire trap kills most of the passengers in the first raft. Deborah’s refusal to leave Beth’s body reflects the immediate shock of losing someone she expected to protect and return home with.

Grief briefly causes Deborah to lash out at Allie, accusing her of knowing enough about Camas Creek that she should have prevented the disaster. She almost immediately recognizes the unfairness of the accusation, showing that her anger comes from unbearable loss rather than cruelty.

Even while grieving, Deborah continues helping the group. She gives clothing and supplies to care for Imani, paddles through exhaustion, assists injured survivors, and remains committed to collective survival.

Her later arrow wound adds another physical burden, but she survives. Deborah’s experience mirrors Kaia’s in an important way: she must continue moving while carrying a fresh loss that cannot be repaired.

Imani

Imani is introduced through her strong attachment to her twin sons, whose photographs she proudly shares with Kaia. Her identity as a mother immediately gives her a powerful reason to return home and also reminds Kaia of the ordinary relationships and futures that remain outside the canyon.

Her injuries are among the most severe of the surviving women. The razor wire severs her arm near the elbow, leaving her trapped against a tree and repeatedly pulled beneath the water before Kaia and the others rescue her.

From that moment onward, Imani is forced to survive while suffering blood loss, shock, cold, and extreme pain. Her worsening condition gives urgency to every decision because delaying too long could kill her even if Leo does not.

Imani’s endurance is largely quiet. She cannot contribute physically at the same level as the others after her injury, yet she remains cooperative and mentally present whenever possible, even helping with the decoy plan when she can barely stay conscious.

Her later recovery is difficult and complicated by the breakdown of her marriage. The continuing support of the other survivors shows that her survival does not end at rescue; adapting to the consequences of what happened becomes another stage of her fight.

Pam

Pam becomes indispensable because she is able to translate her experience as a veterinarian into emergency medical care. When Imani is rescued with a severed arm, Pam takes control, improvises a tourniquet, and helps stabilize her despite having limited supplies.

Her practical nature balances the fear and uncertainty surrounding the group. Pam focuses on what can actually be done in each moment rather than becoming immobilized by the size of the danger ahead.

She is also physically courageous. Pam repeatedly helps injured women through the river, refuses to abandon Deborah or Imani, and joins Macy and Kaia in the final close-range struggle against Leo.

Pam’s survival alongside Kaia has symbolic importance at the end. The two women take Leo’s kayak and make the final journey to the takeout together, meaning Pam helps convert their victory over the killer into the rescue of everyone left behind.

Josh

Josh initially projects confidence and ease, earning the nickname “River Jesus” because of his presence and experience on the water. He is more willing than Macy or Gracie to discuss the old massacre and becomes the person who explains the accepted account to the guests.

His behavior toward Bryan is sometimes insensitive. He participates in the joking and humiliation surrounding the inexperienced guide, unaware that the man being mocked is deliberately constructing a harmless persona.

When violence begins, Josh is temporarily framed by Leo as the attacker. Kaia almost believes that Bryan has saved her from him because Leo uses the confusion of their fight to reverse the apparent roles of victim and killer.

Josh’s final actions establish his true character. Despite being seriously wounded, he tackles Leo to give Kaia another chance to reach the rafts and continues fighting even though the confrontation costs him his life.

Gracie

Gracie is one of the professional guides responsible for taking the women through the canyon safely. She shares Macy’s discomfort whenever the Camas Creek massacre is discussed, suggesting a deeper awareness of how disturbing the location and its history remain for people working on the river.

She is also one of the people who knows the satellite phone was definitely packed before departure. Her certainty helps establish that its disappearance was intentional rather than an ordinary equipment mistake.

Gracie becomes one of Leo’s first victims when the new attack begins at Camas Creek. Her death is the moment when the group’s unease becomes undeniable reality and confirms that whatever has been sabotaging the trip is no longer merely threatening them indirectly.

Beth

Beth’s importance comes primarily through her relationship with Deborah. The sisters enter the journey together, and Deborah’s concern for Beth during dangerous rapids shows the closeness between them before the attack separates the group.

Beth is killed by the razor wire stretched across Anvil. Her death is particularly significant because it transforms the old massacre from an abstract horror into a fresh and deeply personal loss for one of the surviving women.

Deborah’s reaction to Beth also reinforces one of the story’s central emotional realities: survival does not erase the dead. Even while Leo is still hunting them, the women must carry grief with them because there is no safe time or place in which to process it.

Nikki

Nikki shares Allie’s interest in the Camas Creek case and participates in the discussions about the massacre during the early portion of the trip. Her knowledge helps establish how widely the crime has been discussed, theorized about, and turned into public fascination.

She later becomes one of the first victims the survivors find after passing through Leo’s razor-wire trap. Her life jacket keeps her body afloat, but the wire has caused a fatal facial wound.

Nikki’s death gives Kaia immediate physical proof that the unexplained injuries from the first massacre were probably caused by the same type of trap. Her fate therefore becomes part of the moment when the old mystery and the present attack finally connect.

Adrian

Adrian is the Rapids Unlimited manager whose decisions indirectly allow Leo to join the rafting team. Macy had warned him that Bryan seemed unsuitable and that his behavior was strange, but Adrian insisted that he remain.

The available evidence suggests that Adrian knew Bryan was actually Leo Marsden but believed the official account of Leo as the courageous survivor of Camas Creek. He appears to have imagined that Leo’s return to the river could eventually become an inspirational publicity story.

Adrian’s mistake comes from accepting a celebrated narrative without understanding the person behind it. There is no indication that he knowingly placed anyone in danger, but his secrecy and willingness to override Macy’s instincts give Leo exactly the access he needs to stage another massacre.

Themes

Grief, Survival, and Choosing to Remain Alive

Kaia’s struggle is not simply about escaping Leo; it is about deciding whether survival still has meaning after Parker’s death. At the beginning of The Last to Drown, she sometimes views danger with emotional indifference because losing Parker has convinced her that nothing worse can happen.

That attitude changes whenever real death becomes immediate. The river repeatedly exposes the difference between imagining that she does not care whether she lives and experiencing the body’s desperate refusal to die.

Kaia’s lowest moment arrives when she considers releasing her life jacket and allowing the river to take her. Her imagined confrontation with Parker forces her to admit that she has been emotionally suspended since his death, unable to move forward because she believes doing so would leave him behind.

The novel rejects the idea that healing requires forgetting. Kaia does not stop mourning Parker, stop hearing his voice in memory, or find a simple replacement for the life they lost.

Instead, she learns that love for someone who has died can remain part of a living identity. Parker’s final letter confirms what Kaia has slowly learned through survival: continuing to breathe, form relationships, experience fear, and seek happiness does not diminish what they shared.

Cooperation Against Isolation

Leo’s entire plan depends on isolating people physically and psychologically. The missing satellite phone removes contact with civilization, the destroyed water weakens the group, the wilderness prevents an easy retreat, and his attacks create panic designed to scatter the rafters.

The survivors repeatedly defeat that strategy by choosing cooperation even when self-preservation might encourage abandonment. Kaia refuses to leave Imani trapped in the river, Pam uses her knowledge to treat injuries, Deborah gives away clothing, Allie shares supplies, and Macy returns after surviving Anvil rather than escaping alone.

Their skills are different, which makes their dependence on one another especially important. Kaia contributes strategy, Macy provides river knowledge, Pam offers medical competence, Allie brings information and swimming ability, Deborah provides physical and emotional support, and Imani gives the group another life they refuse to surrender.

Leo treats relationships as weaknesses that can be exploited. He assumes grief, fear, exhaustion, and blame will divide the women, but their willingness to forgive moments of anger and continue working together creates a form of strength he cannot reproduce.

The final fight makes this principle physical. No single survivor defeats Leo; Macy destabilizes him, Pam and Kaia attack with her, and their combined effort finally ends his control.

The Danger of False Narratives

For seven years, the public believes that Kellen Stroop committed the Camas Creek massacre and Leo Marsden survived it heroically. That version becomes so firmly established that Leo is able to build an entirely new identity while the dead man he framed remains remembered as a murderer.

The official story survives partly because it is simple. One villain, one heroic survivor, and one completed investigation are easier to accept than the uncomfortable possibility that the survivor himself constructed the account.

Evidence contradicting Leo’s story existed, but much of it was damaged by the river or recognized only years later. His wounds were unusually shallow, the injuries suffered by other victims did not fit the accepted explanation, and later information about his behavior created reasons to reconsider his testimony.

The theme also examines the consequences of turning crimes into public mythology. Movies, online discussions, conspiracy theories, and repeated retellings keep Camas Creek culturally alive, yet attention does not guarantee understanding.

Allie’s experience reflects that problem. She studies the case intensely and still defends Leo because the existing evidence makes sympathy for the supposed survivor seem reasonable.

The truth emerges only when the present violence forces everyone to reinterpret facts they thought they already understood. Certainty becomes dangerous when a compelling narrative discourages further questioning.

Memory, Love, and the Uncertainty of What Remains

Parker’s presence throughout Kaia’s ordeal exists in an uncertain space between memory, psychology, and the possibility of something beyond rational explanation. Kaia had previously researched near-death experiences and Third Man Syndrome because she desperately wanted evidence that consciousness might continue after death.

On the river, Parker seems to speak to her at precisely the moments when she needs information or encouragement. His warnings help her recognize hazards, his phrases lead her toward the decoy strategy, and his anger challenges her when she considers giving up.

The story never establishes whether these experiences are supernatural. That uncertainty is necessary because Kaia’s growth depends on no longer requiring proof.

What Parker taught her during their life together may be enough to explain why his voice appears during crisis. Love has shaped her instincts, memories, humor, courage, and understanding of herself so thoroughly that his influence can continue even if nothing exists after death.

The letter Kaia eventually discovers gives this idea a concrete form. Parker wrote his love into something that physically remained after him, but its deeper significance lies in helping Kaia recognize that memory itself can be an enduring presence.

She therefore reaches a form of acceptance that does not require certainty about the afterlife. She can carry Parker forward without allowing his death to determine the end of her own life.