Potluck

by Jack Rudloe

Book Overview

Jack Rudloe set out to write the first nonfiction book about the Gulf Coast shrimping way of life. What he discovered prompted him to write his first novel instead. Many of his sources are anonymous,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1892590379
• ISBN13: 9781892590374
• Release Date: March 2003
• Publisher: Out Your Backdoor
• Length: 274 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.3" x 0.5" x 5.8"
• Age Range: 16 years and up

Customer Reviews

Great Florida Lore

Readers of Potluck by Jack Rudloe will be treated to a great adventure story in which the hero must make moral choices that will test his deepest values. The story is realistically set in the threatened North Florida shrimping scene, which Rudloe knows intimately, and provides a number of colorful characters who are actually more realistic than a reader might believe. Potluck deals with the collision of the drug and shrimping culture for a rollicking and fast-paced read.

High Adventure on the High Seas!

This is an outstanding novel about high adventure on the high seas and the money that honest men often do not see. If you like books that are full of adventure and mystery with a touch of local North Florida flare than you will love this book. As each of the characters in the story unfolds one soon realizes that each is a truly unique character portraying funny and even strange mannerisms unique to the North Florida Coast! The author does a wonderful job of portraying the hardships of life on the Gulf Coast as fishing restrictions tighten which lead the Shrimpers to make ends meet in anyway possible. Mr. Rudloe soon has you rooting for the good guys (the working man) and booing the bad guys (the drug lords) as you rapidly turn the pages of this novel. You will not be able to put down this energetic, delightful, and fun read!

POTLUCK a winning first novel

The acclaimed 2000 movie Traffic was earnest in its anti-drug message but suffered from overlength and preachiness. Far more compact and engrossing is Jack Rudloe's debut novel, Potluck.Curiously, Potluck takes much the same tack as Traffic, showing how essentially good people are coerced into drug trafficking by impoverished circumstances. The book's main character is Preston Barfield, a shrimp boat captain at the end of his rope. Preston and his young deckhand Charlie are in hock up to their eyebrows, and their shrimp quests keep coming up dry. Then there's Preston's brother-in-law Lupino, whose drug-running escapades endanger the livelihoods, and often the lives, of Preston and his pregnant wife Mary.Rudloe initially planned his book as a nonfiction work, and it shows in the details. Preston experiences enough wild adventures to qualify him as the Indiana Jones of shrimping, but the story is told in a no-frills style that makes it completely plausible. Any reader with little knowledge of boats or shrimping can still appreciate the little-boy wonder of Captain Preston being given a gleaming new boat, or the heartache Preston feels when he finally makes the shrimp catch of his life, only to have circumstances force him to return it to the sea.More to the point, Potluck often detours from the main conflict to provide us with quirky, richly drawn supporting characters that add to the bigger picture. Eventually, Rudloe makes the reader understand the people and circumstances that cause Preston to carry out a task that he knows in his gut is wrong. Rudloe also effectively shows the hypocrisy of officials who nit-pick boaters for petty misdemeanors but often look the other way when crises too big to manage come their way. And while Rudloe never glamorizes illicit drug-dealing, he shows how and why desperate people can rationalize working outside the law to "provide a service" that might not be necessary if such drugs were truly regulated.Rudloe's sardonic viewpoint and Carl Hiassen-like characterizations (complete with much salty language) result in a gripping first novel. Potluck is a bracing read.

Rip-roaring Yarn!

What a great read! If you like a good old-fashioned tale of adventure you'll really enjoy this book. If you love the north Florida Gulf Coast it'll be even more fun and you'll find this book "un-put-downable"! The author obviously knows his locations and his citizens. This up-to date fictional tale of what is happening as the shrimpers of yesterday try to support their families doing what they love but under today's rules is interspersed with enough wild action to make an Ed McBain reader very happy. Mr. Rudloe makes you really like the good guys and really hate the bad guys, and you keep reading to find out who wins. Plus it will make you think every time you order those delicious Gulf shrimp!