ABSTRACT
There are hundreds of vacation islands and islets in the Carib-bean and in the Gulf of Mexico, most of them escape havens for winter-hating residents of North America and Western Europe: white, sandy beaches, endless semitropical sun and sunsets (except for hurricanes and ordinary rainstorms), heroic outdoor sports, haute cuisine (sometimes), privacy or exhibitionism, indoor sports like drinking and/or bed-hopping. As the Ira Gershwin lyrics about the Caribbean had it, “nothing's immoral way out on the coral.” It is to one of these islands in the sun, 3,000 miles from New York City, that Wouk turned for the mise-en-scène of a tragicomic novel.
