A Salty Piece of Land

Just one short step ahead of the law, cowboy and lost soul Tully Mars finds himself fishing for a living in the Caribbean. This wild, unbelievable but thoroughly enjoyable story follows the lyrics of Buffet's song of the same name, and the music appropriately marks the beginning and end of each CD. Narrator John David Souther transports the listener, beautifully portraying Tully's struggle to find himself and his way forward. And as one might expect from Jimmy Buffet, Tully gets where he's going through a lot of fishing, sailing, and partying. The story has the feel of a modern-day pirate adventure, with the gold being self-discovery and a place in the world. Souther, with his sensitive, laid-back voice, drops the listener into the somewhat predictable but entertaining action. H.L.S. (c) AudioFile 2005, Portland, Maine

October 18, 2004
There's a Condé Nast Traveler
article fighting to get out of bestseller Buffett's first new novel in a decade, a groovily laid-back, ramblingly anecdotal, sun-soaked bit of Caribbean escapism that his Parrothead fans will relish like another chorus of "Margaritaville." Tully Mars, a 40-ish ex-cowboy turned guide at the Lost Boys Fishing Lodge island resort, undertakes various sojourns around the Caribbean, to Mayan ruins, a jungle safari camp, a spring break bacchanal in Belize. Nothing much happens—"That day, we spent the rest of the daylight hours on the shallow waters of Ascension Bay and the lagoon amid incredible natural beauty unlike anything I had ever seen before" is about as busy as it gets—except that Tully meets a parade of colorful natives and expatriates, including a Mayan medicine man, a British commando and a 103-year-old woman who skippers a sailing schooner and wants to restore a historic lighthouse on Cayo Loco, the titular island. The characters are all hospitality entrepreneurs, and Buffett (A Pirate Looks at Fifty
) also gives them shaggy-dog anecdotes, tidbits of Caribbean history and desultory life lessons to relate. There are glimmers of plot—bounty hunters, loves lost and found—but mostly Tully has little to do but savor the accommodations and atmospherics of tourist locales while the sea washes him with waves of love, happiness and maturity as infallibly as the tides. This book is as cheery and tropical as Buffet's music. (Nov. 30)

Forecast:
There's nothing laid-back about the major promo effort the publisher is making to push Buffett's latest; the 650,000 first printing suggests the scale of the campaign. Expect this to hit bestseller lists fast.

January 1, 2004
Songster Buffett is back, and so is Tully Mars, protagonist of Tales from Margaritaville.

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