It's not often these days that you hear of Christian missionaries bringing the modern world to an isolated people who were doing pretty well without it--but that's what recently happened on an island off the Philippine mainland, where the Ibatan people have lived undisturbed for nearly 150 years. Pulitzer Prize-winning author Ron Suskind (A Hope in the Unseen) will tell the story of the impact of American missionaries Rundell and Judi Maree on the island in a book just signed by Luke Dempsey for Pocket Books Press. He bought world rights from agent Kris Dahl at ICM, and will publish in hardcover in fall 2003. Suskind's as-yet-untitled work will tell how the islanders have been trying to choose how much of the contemporary American approach to the world to accept, and what to reject.