Hold the Goat

"The third time I stepped over Everett's body to get to the copy machine, it occurred to me that what I was feeling might be stress." With this opening sentence, Tew sends his readers on an adventure with a couple facing burnout that provides a belly laugh a page. Gavin Bryant, award winning copy writer and account executive for a large advertising agency, acts on his dream of moving to an uninhabited tropical island to escape the pressures of corporate life. He takes with him Linda Arrington, head of marketing for his largest client, forbidden fruit as long as they worked together. A tiki hut home, their own beach and a boat to get to the nearest large island for provisions and other necessities are all the two need until family members come visiting, as well as live-aboard cruisers and customers of a nearby sailboat charter company. The book moves rapidly through a series of humorous vignettes involving Gavin's troublesome mother-in-law, her second daughter, pot-smoking Rastafarian carpenters, erotic Haitian dancers and a cosmopolitan assortment of visiting boaters, all of whom create both work and tension for Gavin and Linda. Paradise becomes crowded pretty quickly, and Gavin is left to wonder where he misplaced Eden.