Product Description

From the author of The Tribes of Palos Verdes, a compelling new novel about a couple's getaway to a Mexican paradise that goes horribly wrong. The Tribes of Palos Verdes J oy Nicholson's second novel, The Road to Esmeralda, is a dark, seductive story about Americans abroad. Fed up with their L.A. lives, Nick and Sarah decide to head south to Mexico. They are looking for something: Love, self-fulfillment, inspiration, or even just peace of mind. However, as the roads get windier and the jungle thicker, this nave pair realizes that all of the trappings of society-greed, drugs, violence and jealousy -exist even in the remotest of places. Even tiny Esmeralda has a secret agenda... Whileher prose remains heartfelt and spare, Nicholson, in The Road to Esmeralda, also reveals a political edge. In exploring the prejudices of a small Mexican town, she weaves a harrowing and tragic story of love, devastation, and what it means to be a young, intelligent American in a very angry world.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #696004 in Books
• Published on: 2005-06-01
• Released on: 2005-05-26
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 346 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Los Angelinos Nick Sperry and girlfriend Sarah Gustafsson flee the threat of post-9/11 terrorist attacks and their stagnant lives for the Yucatán jungle in Nicholson's second novel, a suspenseful geopolitical psychodrama (after The Tribes of Palos Verdes). Sarah, a statuesque freelance graphic designer, and Nick, an alcoholic failed writer wrestling with memories of his abusive, deceased father and an unwritten antiwar novel, head to Mexico by car, reluctant to fly while terrorist warnings are high. At the tonier resorts, Europeans and Mexican natives who object to the impending war in Iraq accost Nick and Sarah with anti-American taunts, so the pair travel hundreds of miles further south than they intended, to the tiny town of Esmeralda in the heart of the Yucatán's Caribbean side. They check into the Gasthaus Esmeralda, a walled-in Swiss Family Robinson–style chalet owned by creepy German expatriates Karl and Cordula Von Tollman. Nicholson builds the psychological tension brick by brick and brings the seedy, pathetic Gasthaus Esmeralda to itchy, smelly, sweaty life as the foursome face off in a downward spiral of suspicion and drug-related intrigue. Though chiaroscuro of dark doings juxtaposed against the white heat of the jungle makes for an atmospheric read, the flat ending falls a bit short of the novel's promise. Agent, Betsy Amster. (June)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Nicholson (The Tribes of Palos Verde, 1997) thrusts naive characters into a shockingly vile quagmire in this dark psychological twister. Nick, a blocked alcoholic writer whose job is on the line, fights nightmarish memories of a childhood spent in fear of an abusive father and seeks a writer's catharsis in Mexico with his stately girlfriend, Sarah. Faced with crowds of tourists and unexpected antagonism toward Americans in northern Mexico, they continue south, landing finally in what appears to be a lovely jungle guesthouse. From that point on, their paradisiacal vacation morphs into a steamy bad dream full of half-revealed subplots and diabolical intent on the part of everyone they meet. Nothing is as it seems, the innocent are quickly corrupted, and survivors are few in the battle against drug cartels, violence, avarice, and sheer cunning. The author's keen eye for human motivation and shady dealings forces an uncomfortable squirm of recognition, as with leisurely steps the mesmerizing jungle pulls us inexorably toward a place where Heart of Darkness meets Miami Vice. Jennifer Baker
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review

Customer Reviews

The Wisdom of No Escape
What really struck me about this book was the deceptive charm of almost every character, which is what makes the story such an intense and intimate experience. In reading it, you feel like you're finding out secrets about your friends, colleagues, neighbors and fellow humans-secrets you really hoped weren't true. There's Karl, a seemingly kind old German hippie who's created his guesthouse utopia in the Yucatan, a retreat among the lush tropical flowers and gentle surf; there's his handyman Al, the ostensibly harmless beach bum dropout and scrappy ex-pat who picks up work in whatever country he finds himself; there's the brothers, a couple of colorful corrupt local officials. Enter tortured Nick from L.A., tormented by his unfinished novel, and his young idealistic wife, Sarah, who wants to save the planet, do the right thing, be good. Sound enticing? Sound too good to be true? Oh it is, and Nicholson masterfully, with impeccable timing, plots a story of one eerie revelation after another, until you literally shudder at the monstrosity of the human heart. Mexico is the perfect setting for such a tale, too, with its pretty surface that hides all the demons of globalism: corporate violence and profiteering, drugs, shifty ex-pats, hapless `good' Americans and Europeans who drive the engine of evil with their denial and mass consumption of drugs and resources. We are all part of the problem and have to face it, because in this book-and maybe this is the larger message-the heroes and the villains are the same people. Tough medicine. But empowering too. This is an important and profound book, and Nicholson's mind and writing are like a sharp knife-beautifully clean, relentlessly sublime and ruthlessly frank. She'll cut you, but the scar will be something you're glad you have and a reminder that good writing is an awesomely powerful way to communicate hard truths.

A memorable work
This book found its way into my Amazon.com inbox after *The Tribes of Palos Verdes*, Ms. Nicholson's first novel, came into my mind "out of nowhere," seven years after I read it. I consider long-term memory retention an indicator of a good story.

I bought *The Road To Esmeralda* because I found Ms. Nicholson's style engaging in her first novel. I like to read things in little pieces. I like to be able to put a book down for 72 hours, pick it up again, and resume the dream with minimum brain boot-up time. (I suspect this comes from my own experience as a technical editor.) When I flipped through the pages of this most recent novel, I saw that it is written in the same structured way as *Tribes*. It is also divided into parts, code named by colors of the spectrum as the wavelength increases. Cool! This reminds me, for some reason, of Solzhenitsyn.

The book's main protagonist, Nick Sperry, is a "frustrated male drunk in the tropics." Ms. Nicholson sure got that tune right! (Here is a female author who knows how the male mind works, at least when it is not operating properly.) The other protagonists all have serious problems, too, with the most eccentric of the lot, Karl, evidently the least insane. The interaction among characters is balanced, and flashbacks are well done. As a non-fiction scribbler more comfortable with manipulating equations and generating schematic diagrams than visiting with the muses of fiction, I have the profoundest respect for Ms. Nicholson. She's one of the best authors I have ever stumbled across.

And now, a warning! If you want an uplifting book, this is not it. It starts out dark, and gets darker all the way. Is there a "moral"? Maybe. One might read politics into it; one might see it as xenophobic. The ending goes "over the top." However, it is by no means an impossible scenario in this paranoid new world. But let's not kid ourselves. Many factors contributed to the ruin of Nick Sperry, but alcohol abuse was the root cause. If there is a message here, I suspect it could be, "Stay sober when traveling in foreign countries."

A south of the border escape: in more ways than one
Ms. Nicholson does a great job of conveying the tone of a south of the border escape as such it almost is suffocating at times and doesn't let the characters breathe in the opening moments of the book. But as the story progresses, it becomes obvious that the intent of the author is to show the characters and how they are being suffocated by where they are headed, metaphorically, spiritually, and morally.
Well written and one of the most absorbing books I have read in a while.