This is a book review about a book from our Eastpoint area. It is an interesting and entertaining read. Check out my book "The Eastpointer" while you are looking. For more information on "Potluck" you will have to go to Amazon but for info on "The Eastpointer" click on book cover to right on this page.

Potluck

By Jack Rudloe

Book Review

By Richard E. Noble

My wife and I live in Eastpoint Fl. Eastpoint is known as the oyster capital of Florida. My wife and I caught oysters for our livelihood for over a decade. We were “oyster people” or seafood workers. Our neighborhood is filled with shrimpers and crabbers and seafood workers of all types and kinds. The characters in this book are my neighbors and fellow workers.

Mr. Rudloe does an excellent job in capturing us seafood workers as we really are. And I know why he was able to accomplish this. He lives in Panacea which is just east of Eastpoint where I live and write my books. He works hand in hand with seafood workers. He has worked as a shrimper on shrimp boats. He has spent much of his life in this seafood district, living and working side by side with seafood workers. He knows the people that he has described in this work. I am sure that every character in this book is based on a real life person that Jack has known from the neighborhood.

Mr. Rudloe has established a marine laboratory in Panacea. He is a scientist by occupation and a fiction writer by avocation. He and his wife write books of a technical nature on marine biology. I have read and reviewed a few.

What I enjoy most about Mr. Rudloe’s books is his ability to speak to the common man. He makes science and marine biology fun to read. And in his fiction, likewise, I admire his ability to create down to earth, recognizable regular folks, living and playing in true to life fashion. This book is a perfect example of his “common” touch.

The book is a work of fiction. But there was a time in this area when events such as those described in this work by the author were commonplace. Smuggling drugs in from the Gulf waters by shrimpers and seafood workers, even oystermen, went on. Bales of marijuana were found floating around in Apalachicola Bay, just outside my door.

Everybody around this neighborhood knows about it and can give you many, many justifiable reasons why their cousin Floy, Roy or Coy may have been involved in this illegal practice. There are many adventure stories of this type and nature that can be told by many a small boat captain, now retired, living around here. I could write a few myself.

I thought this book was great fun. For me it was hardly fiction and some of the stories and scenes described by the author, in my humble opinion, could warrant investigation by the proper authorities. I’m just kidding, of course. This is a work of fiction but written in such a manner that it is more than believable.

I know this author and have met him personally. I had always considered him to be a scientist and a very knowledgeable person. I did not expect his fiction to be so entertaining, creative, realistic, and down right enjoyable.

This is a good one to read, lots of fun and entertainment and actually a little real history to boot. Things like this did happen around here. They sure ‘nuff did.