The Gringo's Hawk
Though its premise is promising, this memoir of an American  man's three decades in the coastal rain forests of Costa Rica  proves a stilted and unrewarding read. Maranon is not a gifted  storyteller, though he does have tales to tell. And while his  environmental and cultural concerns are laudable and certainly  sincere, they're blunted by a superficial interpretation of his  adopted nation's economic and political realities. His story  starts in 1972, at age 21, when in the course of a diffident  college career he arrived in Morita, on the country's southern  Pacific coast. Enthralled by the scenery and the people he met,  Maranon became a self-described "de facto anthropologist."  Within a couple of years, he had bought property and firmly  committed to ecologically sensitive, land-sustaining  development turned his hand to cattle ranching, then cocoa  cultivation, among other efforts, before trying to join the  tourist trade none of which endeavors actually supported him  (income from family investments in the U.S. did). His  back-to-the-land account of learning the language; managing his  native employees; coping with marauding rodents, corrupt local  officials and rapacious developers; and rebounding from his  mistakes, has a mildly slapstick tone which is fitfully  engaging. His concluding chapters, in which he laments the  destruction of rain forests, the overfishing of the ocean and  landscape-scarring highway construction, are heartfelt, but his  anecdotes and good intentions lack the glue of good writing.  (July)Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.