NATIONAL BOOK AWARD NOMINEE • A stunning novel about a deadly rivalry in Key West from the acclaimed author of Cloudbursts. McGuane has constructed a novel with the impetus of a thriller and the heartbroken humor that is his distinct contribution to American prose.
Tiring of the company of junkies and burn-outs, Thomas Skelton goes home to Key West to take up a more wholesome life. But things fester in America's utter South. And Skelton's plans to become a skiff guide in the shining blue subtropical waters place him on a collision course with Nichol Dance, who has risen to the crest of the profession by dint of infallible instincts and a reputation for homicide.
"Thomas McGuane makes the page, the paragraph, the sentence itself a record of continuous imaginative activity.... He is an important as well as a brilliant novelist." —The New York Times Book Review
"Full of surprises and rewards and an exhilaration one feels only rarely.... I offer a gentle exhortation -- please read this book." - Newsday
"Thomas McGuane makes the page, the paragraph, the sentence itself a record of continuous imaginative activity.... He is an important as well as a brilliant novelist." --The New York Times Book Review
"McGuane's sense of place, his harsh and delicate exactness of detail are at their keenest." --Newsweek
"Few writers have explored our national malaise as persistently -- or as elegantly -- as Thomas McGuane, a writer whose command of the language has helped define our American loneliness." --Philadelphia Inquirer
