Judging Paradise

Judging Paradise is set on the fictional Caribbean island of Santa Clara. The protagonist, Frank Walker, is a 22-year-old college dropout drawn to Santa Clara by the promise of paradise on the cheap. The novel chronicles a 24-hour period centering around Frank?s attempts to celebrate Thanksgiving. Frank?s wanderings on Thanksgiving reveal a world of cruelty and confusion. Rather than a traditional holiday with family and friends, Frank spends his Thanksgiving doing battle with a scorpion, drinking through a number of fruitless and dysfunctional encounters with women of various stripes, witnessing a depressing bar fight, keeping his only friend from beating a neighbor to death, enduring a hallucinogenic encounter in a graveyard, and finally watching as his home goes up in flames claiming the lives of six of his neighbors. The novel?s close is admittedly ambiguous, reflecting the uncertain nature of Frank?s life, and the life of most seekers.