Gringo's Hawk Sterling Evans Review

In Jon Marañón's The Gringo's Hawk there is a very clear sense of place that permeates practically every page. As the story of an American who falls in love with a piece of the tropical world he calls Cantarana on southern Costa Rica's Pacific Coast, however, the reader is not given the standard "traveller in paradise" account. No, in this book, we have a study of what survival is like for him and his Tico neighbors on what he rightfully calls "the frontline of tropical reality." And while he is awed by the beauty and power of the place, he learns first-hand the meaning of eaking out a living in a region that constantly places barriers in survival's way. Along this journey of living there he discovers the ecological and cultural boundaries of what works and what does not (i.e. farming, forestry, fishing, conservation, tourism). But this is not a nature book, per se; it also is a testimony to what became for him a sense of community as well as of environment. The two went hand in hand--the place was not without its human history, nor without the people who lived there and became his neighbors, workers, close friends, and family. Here we meet these people and become acquainted with the "drama" of their lives--the non-fantasy world of actual living in the tropics, confronting environmental change, and dealing with the advent of a globalized world economy that was reaching into their corner of the world. Marañón's response to these changes affecting his life and that of his neighbors is a compelling part of this story. And in dealing with those issues, he continues to seek ways of living with the land. For him perhaps it was like Frank Lloyd Wright's famous advice for architecture, not to build a house on a hill, but rather of the hill. Marañón built his house and life not in, but of Cantarana.

Dr. Sterling Evans, Author of The Green Republic: A Conservation History of Costa Rica.

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