An old boy named Tucker Gatrell claims he's discovered a Fountain of Youth on his property. Well, he hasn't actually done any testing on it, but he and his old Cicela friend Joseph both feel better after drinking it. And the state government is about to take the land to add to a state park, pending a hearing being held on Tucker's property. And it's not as though Tuck actually owns the land where the artesian spring is located, as he sold it to some mysterious blind trust.
But all that's irrelevant, if he can just get his marine biologist nephew to help him by running some tests on the water to prove his claims. Except Marion wants nothing to do with him, but Tuck figures he can work around that. Maybe get Sally down the road, fresh off a divorce, to do some photography in the bay outside Marion's home.
I really don't know how to describe this book. It feels like White describing the kind of weirdos that apparently inhabit Florida. The non-tourist Florida, the backwater Florida. The areas where the last stubborn holdouts of a Florida that barely exists between the tourism, rising sea levels and the protected wilderness (what isn't overrun with invasive pythons) live.
Tucker lives in a crumbling house surrounded by the detritus of a varied life, in a town that's largely been deserted. His friend Joseph lived alone in a shack in the woods, and got sent to a shitty nursing home after he collapsed one day. Marion was apparently a sports star in college, spent time in government intelligence, then moved back 30 minutes from the uncle he lived with for 3 years, but has apparently avoided ever since.
But Tucker seems like the protagonist, or at least, he's the character that drives everything. Bothers Marion, nudges Sally, prods Joseph to flee the nursing home, gets a whole media thing going about his "special" water. And this is a problem, because I can't stand him. He is the sort of good old boy bullshitter I have to deal with at work. Always superficially charming, always got a story, always got an excuse, always got a complaint about the mean old government, and how he's just not appreciated and he's just trying to make a honest doll-blah blah blah.
This guy literally sets up traps to foul the boats of two government environmental inspectors sent to survey the property, so that they'll get stuck in the middle of nowhere and a crazy old friend of Tucker's can "save" them. By which I mean he sticks them in a hole and makes them cut sugar cane for him to "pay off" the debt they owe from him saving them. OK, that's kidnapping and slavery, and I'm supposed to, what, admire Tuck's cleverness and ingenuity manipulating everyone to complete his scam? Fuck that.
The writing is solid, there's some good turns of phrase. The themes of people struggling with the ruts they fall into, how its easy to look around and realize years have past, the world has changed but you haven't. But also it seems like most people fall easily back into those ruts. Marion and Sally hit it off, but they can't fit comfortably together, so Sally deludes herself about her ex. Tucker is still a bullshitter, Marion's hippie friend Tomlinson briefly tries to change, then decides it's not for him. Maybe Marion changes, I guess if there was another book that might come out. And if the book doesn't involve Tucker Gatrell, I might even want to read it.
'But soon Joseph Egret, who in his entire life had never allowed regrets to linger, began to recover from the shock of being dead. If he were a ghost, his new form might offer certain opportunities that his old living form had not. He studied the possibilities as he walked past more nice houses. He could steal money most probably. Take from the rich and give to his friends. That would be nice. And he might make a visit to the women's shower room at the local college. He had always dreamed of a chance to do that. Maybe being a ghost wouldn't be so bad, after all. He'd become a phantom Robin Hood - with hobbies.'
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