What is Island of the Blue Dolphins about?

Based on a true story, The Island of the Blue Dolphins describes the years in which Karana lives alone on a Pacific island, after her people fled from visiting hunters. Having been abandoned on her island at age twelve, she spends eighteen years waiting for them to return for her. Karana learns to fend for herself, fighting wild dogs, harsh weather, occasional visitors and her own feelings of loneliness. While she is taken from the island in the end, she looks back at the period between her abandonment and her rescue as a rich time, when she was surrounded by many animal friends, and she had the satisfaction of making a good life for herself, in spite of her solitude.