Saltwater Cowboy: The Rise and Fall of a Marijuana Empire

In this genial memoir, former smuggler McBride portrays an idyllic, footloose, and lucrative career running marijuana on the southwest Florida coast in the 1980s. In 1979, McBride drove his Mustang Cobra from Wisconsin to %E2%80%9Clive like a beach bum" on Chokoloskee Island, just outside the Everglades. A month later he was smuggling pot from South American freighters. The money kept getting better as he began to run crews of his own. McBride embraced his version of the American Dream, buying the best toys, flinging $100 bills at waitresses, and falling in love with a beautiful, volatile bartender. Inevitably, a stint in federal prison led him to recalibrate his priorities. Chapters alternate between McBride's rise as a smuggler and his years of jailhouse blues. In both milieus he provides vibrant sketches of characters and situations, including a business trip via private jet to the mansion of a paranoid Colombian cartel boss. The best writing depicts the funky community of his sheltered corner of the Everglades, a seeming paradise where a big family of rednecks, fishermen, and freaks put one over on the feds. McBride offers himself as an American everyman who was both rewarded and punished for a national hypocrisy. (Apr.)