The Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Lonesome Dove recounts his 1999 odyssey to Tahiti and the South Seas Islands, a journey he took in response to his dying mother's revelations about her marriage, relationship with his father, and life against the harsh, violent landscape of west Texas. 75,000 first printing. The bard of the Texas plains ventures into unfamiliar territory in this slender, entertaining travelogue of the tropical islands of the South Pacific. McMurtry, a veteran of long car trips along the back roads of the American desert, boards a cruise ship this time around, and not without some foreboding; wandering among the Marquesas with a motley complement of international "island junkies" with whom he finds little in common, this most bookish of writers finds himself running short of reading matter, forced to slow down to the tedious pace of long-distance sea travel, and not entirely content at the turn of events. McMurtry doesn't complain: instead, he passes the time remarking on the national and personal idiosyncrasies of his fellow passengers, mostly in good humor, and reflecting on closeted family skeletons, feelings of marginality and loneliness, mortality, and other matters while observing the passing scene. A departure in many ways, Paradise finds McMurtry in a contemplative mood. "Nowhere else," he writes, "have I felt so far," and not only geographically. There's enough local color, enough dank glens, misty mountains, and sun-dazzled beaches to satisfy armchair travel buffs, but this is a quiet, thoughtful voyage that reveals that true paradise lies close to the heart. --Gregory McNamee Pulitzer Prize winner McMurtry has written a gem of a book part family memoir and part travelog in this slim, autobiographical volume. The author of 24 novels, four nonfiction books, and more than 30 screenplays and editor of an anthology of modern Western fiction, McMurtry has recently become deeply introspective, as evidenced by his memoirs, Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen (LJ 10/1/99) and Roads. (LJ 7/00) In these memoirs, McMurtry reflected on his own life and experiences, providing a sense of Texas as vast, unique, yet in an inevitable decline. In this new memoir, he tells a west Texas tale, but he writes it from the peace and tranquillity of the South Sea Islands. McMurtry boards a freighter to the Marquesas to begin his journey both physical and emotional and records his parents' lives, beginning with their marriage in 1934 during the depths of the Depression. He analyzes their lives prior to their union and contrasts them with the lushness, laziness, and sheer beauty of Tahiti and the South Sea Islands. This personal little book offers both a wonderful depiction of a place and a sincere picture of the author and his family. Highly recommended. Cynde Bloom Lahey, New Canaan Lib., CT Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. McMurtry is such a pro he could make laundry seem interesting. Now in his sixties, a veteran of heart surgery and the author of two dozen novels, he has been scrutinizing his own life in a spate of memoirs, including Walter Benjamin at the Dairy Queen (1999) and Roads (2000). In this installment, a magnetic blend of irascibility and grace, he recounts the journey he made to Oceania while his mother lay dying in Texas. He begins in Tahiti, where he praises Gauguin for the painter's discernment of the shadow side of this sensually perfect yet melancholy place. From there he boards a freighter--along with a group of fellow travelers he dubs, not altogether unkindly, lotus eaters and island junkies--for the Marquesas, which, in their profound isolation and refreshing absence of hotels, define, for him, the very essence of "farness." He is surprised, therefore, to find that their communities remind him of Southwest Indian reservations and the "drying-up small towns on the Great Plains," perceptions that intensify his thoughts about his mother, his parents' long, unhappy marriage, and their complete lack of interest in the world beyond west Texas. This is the beauty of McMurtry's forthright chronicle: he's attuned to the silky sea but cued to the grit of home, cannily aware that he's put himself into a sort of limbo, floating from island to island cut off from family, friends, and the news, while his mother is also adrift, separating slowly from the body and the self, bound for a realm that, like the Marquesas, may or may not be paradise. Donna Seaman Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved Larry McMurtry is the author of twenty-nine novels, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Lonesome Dove . His other works include two collections of essays, three memoirs, and more than thirty screenplays, including the coauthorship of Brokeback Mountain , for which he received an Academy Award. He lives in Archer City, Texas.