The book chronicles the maturing of Wolfe's autobiographical character, Eugene Gant, in his desperate search for fulfillment, making his way from

A story of black and white in the American South with Berenice Sadie Brown, a black cook who mothers the motherless Frankie Addams, a lonely over

Santiago is a Cuban fisherman who encounters a giant marlin in the Gulf Stream and the battle for his catch becomes one of survival against a ban