Tashtego

By David Elder

Daggoo, Queequeg and Tashtego. The three harpooners from Melville's classic Moby Dick. It is 1984 and Royal St. Vincent, a muscle car engineer from General Motors, hits the bottle after a bitter divorce and custody battle. St. Vincent hits the road and when the bottle is empty, he finds himself in Islemarada Florida and ready to start a new life. He buys the the sixty foot sports fishing boat, the Makaira and settles happily into his new life as a deep sea sports fishing captain surrounded by his colorful Florida Keys friends. One day the unthinkable happens. He is approached by the more than beautiful girl Scotty from Miami who wants to charter the Makaira for a trip. Suspicious of strange friends and against his better judgment, he stakes the trip and his life is never the same again.It is the wild mid-eighties of Scarface and cocaine cowboys in South Florida and drugs run rampant. Forced to work for a drug cartel, St. Vincent is persuaded to hide drugs in his daily catch until he is even tally discovered by a local undercover DEA agent. Torn apart by the love of his daughter in Michigan, who has been threatened by the cartel and pressure from the Federal drug agency, he is advised by his mysterious Haitian recluse friend John, who lives in the Florida swamps, that Tashtego is the notorious head of the snake that controls the bloody drug cartel and his life.From Key West to the Turks and Cacaos Islands, Cuba, Columbia and Bolivia and against the backdrop pf the furious eruption of Nevado Del Ruiz in 1985, St. Vincent and his chosen friends must find the identity of Tashtego and free St. Vincent from the clutches of the mysterious and deadly drug load.Based loosely upon Moby Dick and the Heart of Darkness, Tashtego is introduced by the thoughts and emotions of a 2,000 pound Blue Marlin while she fights for her very life against man and nature. With and background of sports fishing in the Florida Keys, the real mystery of the book is who is Tashtego and the ultimate answer will certainly surprise the reader.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1520750889
• ISBN13: 9781520750880
• Release Date: March 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 658 Pages
• Weight: 2.39 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 1.6" x 6.0"