In 1999, Larry McMurtry, whose wanderlust had been previously restricted to the roads of America, set off for a trip to the paradise of Tahiti and the South Sea Islands in an old-fashioned tub of a cruise boat, at a time when his mother was slipping toward a paradise of her own. Opening up to her son in her final days, his mother makes a stunning revelation of a previous marriage and sends McMurtry on a journey of an entirely different kind.

Vividly, movingly, and with infinite care, McMurtry paints a portrait of his parents' marriage against the harsh, violent landscape of west Texas. It is their roots -- laced with overtones of hard work, bitter disappointment, and the Puritan ethic -- that McMurtry challenges by traveling to Tahiti, a land of lush sensuality and easy living. With fascinating detail, shrewd observations, humorous pathos, and unforgettable characters, he begins to answer some of the questions of what paradise is, whether it exists, and how different it is from life in his hometown of Archer City, Texas.

Reviews

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 Cahners Business Information.

Amanda Heller "The Boston Globe" Larry McMurtry is at his most charming in this shipboard travelogue...His "Paradise, " though tinged with regret, is paradise enow.

Prolific Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, memoirist, screenplay writer and bookstore owner McMurtry (Lonesome Dove, etc.) took a 1999 cruise to "paradise" Tahiti and the South Sea Islands "in order to think and write about" his parents, Hazel and Jeff McMurtry. The couple "saw the sea only once" during their 43-year marriage in Archer County, Tex., about which their son writes, "Many people like Archer County, and a few people love it, but no one would be likely to think it an earthly paradise." The lush landscape of Tahiti and neighboring islands contrasts sharply with his parents' hardscrabble North Texas life. Listening "to the gentle slosh of the Pacific" in the lagoon beneath his raised bungalow, he recalls the day in 1954, as he packed to leave for college, when his mother startled him with the revelation that she had previously been married. Aboard the Aranui, he watches his shipmates ("world-class shoppers") while making occasional attempts to phone his dying mother back in Texas. He closely observes his surroundings (the Marquesas has "an end-of-the-world feel," while the Ua Pou flea market provides "a good illustration of the reach of global capitalism and its ability to turn the whole world into a species of mall"). As his odyssey ends, he wants "to turn right around and go back to Nuku Hiva." Readers of this excellent travelogue, abounding with literary references from Henry James to Kerouac, will likely return to the book often to reread their favorite passages of McMurtry's meditative prose. Map. Agent, Andrew Wylie, Wylie Agency. (June 7) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.