The one year I expected to spend writing a book, turned into three. However, my memoir, Trapped in Key West – on the back side of a tourist island is now complete. Writing was the fun part, but actually getting it in print to my satisfaction, took longer than I ever expected. Nevertheless, I am happy with the look of the book, and it ended up being a good representation of what I hoped to accomplish.
Parts of the book are necessarily biographical, but it is primarily a story about events that took place in my life as a result of growing up in Key West, and being in the commercial fishing industry. Chapters on the Mariel Boatlift, drug smuggling, Bahama trips, and treasure hunting, are interspersed with more personal stories of family life, commercial fishing, and the isolation from mainstream America that Key West once enjoyed.
Though I have been a highly vocal, and often controversial supporter of commercial fishing in the Florida Keys, the book is non-political. It is not about fishery regulation, or my lifelong battles with the bureaucracy, but is intended to be a light read which imparts the flavor of a Key West that no longer exists.
For now, the book can be only purchased through the website stockislandlobster.com
