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)