Florida Man by Tom Cooper

Published by Random House on July 28, 2020

Florida Man, like Florida, is unpredictably weird in ways that provoke laughter. If a news headline begins with “Florida Man,” it will end with something like “arrested for teaching parrots to make death threats to IRS agents.” Florida is a land of sinkholes and decaying roadside attractions that overpromise bizarre wonders. It is also a haven for eccentrics. The fictional eccentric who carries the story in Florida Man, and the crew of collateral characters who weave in and out of the story, are sufficiently peculiar to mark themselves as true Floridians.

Florida Man’s protagonist is Reed Crowe, sometimes described as a hippie or a beach bum, definitely a stoner, something of a loner although not always by choice. Reed was once married to a woman named Heidi, with whom he maintains an on-and-(mostly)-off relationship. They lost their daughter, for which Crowe blames himself. Perhaps his lifestyle is a means of self-punishment or a futile attempt to forget by smoking himself into a daily oblivion.

Crowe owns a motel on Emerald Island and the Florida Man Mystery House, one of the roadside attractions that once littered Florida but have been largely undone by Disney World. He is assisted by Wayne Wade, Crowe’s childhood friend who, in adulthood, has become something of a degenerate, even by Florida standards. A likable kid named Eddie, perhaps the character who comes closest to a conventional definition of normal, also helps out.

Crowe got lucky at some point and rescued some bundles of weed from a smuggler’s airplane that crashed. He thought one of the sinking smugglers might have survived but talked himself out of believing that the man might still be alive. The smuggler, Hector “Catface” Morales, carries a grudge and eventually comes after Crowe.

Another character who seems interested in coming after Crowe is Henry Yahchilane, who suspects that Crowe might have stumbled onto evidence of a potential crime that Yahchilane would prefer to keep buried. The men have some tense moments until they find themselves sharing a predicament that neither of them might survive. After that, they sustain a lifelong friendship. Crowe and Yahchilane don’t necessarily go out of their way to spend time together, but they manage to be there for each other at critical moments.

The plot takes Crowe through a significant block of his life. While a secondary character through much of the novel, Yahchilane becomes a primary character at the end. The two men share a hurricane and other experiences as their lives intertwine, including a determination to do something about Wayne Wade before he causes more harm. Crowe is largely on his own, however, when Catface goes on a rampage in his quest for revenge.

Tom Cooper’s prose is snappy and his humor is dark. When I wasn’t cringing, I was laughing. As Florida Man meandered along its detour-laden plot, I occasionally wondered what the story is about. A novel doesn’t necessarily have to be about anything, but Florida Man turns out to be about life. Friendship, loss, aging, laughter and tears, change and endurance, the surprises that give life its flavor, and finally death. A key character realizes that life is the series of stories we accumulate before life ends. If enough of the stories are good, life was good. Cooper recounts a series of good stories, ranging from meaningful to silly, that add up to strange but, in the end, good lives for Crowe and Yahchilane.

RECOMMENDED