A Little Belize, A Little Mexico, A Little Midlife Crisis?

In my on-again, off-again love affair with my Kindle (love the convenience, miss the smell of paper), I splurge and buy a digital copy of The Last Full Service Crocodile Ranch in Quintana Roo (2012) by Richard Hofheimer.

It’s an engrossing story about a cancer survivor, on her second marriage, on her second honeymoon, on a trip to Mexico when just maybe she might have preferred to return to a seemingly more authentic Belize, where she had a youthful encounter with a shaman. On this road trip, heading out from Cancún, she is riffing on her current man, on the cancer, on life so far, on the glory days of the past, on the high end and the down-low of vacations in Mexico, touristy one minute, possibly truly real the next.

I only paid 99 cents for the work and if I’d been smarter and paid closer attention to the writeup on Amazon, I could have “borrowed” it using my Prime membership. Oh well. It turns out there was a lot of print I should have paid attention to. I noted that it was the winner of the A.E. Coppard International Long Fiction Competition. So I was a little surprised when the ‘book’ turns out to be about a healthy chapter in length.

Crocodile Ranch is an engaging read as the main character easily transitions between past and present, losses and gains. It could have used a better copy editor, and I am definitely left wondering, where’s the rest of it? The author should most definitely extend this work to the true length of a book. Is this one worth a buck? Yep. Especially if you’re headed to Cancún any time soon.

—Lori Tripoli

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Heading to Cancún? Consider these posts:

• How to Choose a Hotel in Cancun
• Cancun for the Convenience
• The Contrasts of Isla Mujeres

 

Visiting Belize? Take a look at these writeups:

• Why Belize? Why Not?
• The Mystery of Belize: Where Everyone Has a Back Story
• Making Our Way to the Cotton Tree Lodge