P U R A V I D A
Featured in the New York Times, Windy City Times, Amcostarica.com, and La Nacion...
The controversial new novel, now available as an ebook...
PURA VIDA is a never before seen look at the Costa Rican sex trade. It captures the misadventures of one gringo's search for Latin love--a blackly comedic Paradise Lost love story set in Costa Rica, about the end of a distinctly American era.
In the space of 24 hours Pauly Vegas, the proud owner of a dead-end life, has gone from working on a riverboat in Aurora, Illinois, to a stock market score and escape to exotic Costa Rica, landing in the latrine of the infamous Park Hotel, a scrawl of graffiti, like a prophecy, on the wall before him: "Somebody, please, stop me before I fuck again."
Stumbling into an underworld of Tica prostitutes, we follow Pauly into San Jose's sex clubs, encountering the Happy Boys--American expat "lifers" running Cuban cigars, ex-Green Beret, investment bankers, all drawn to live Costa Rica's "Pura Vida," the Good Life.
CRITICAL ACCLAIM FOR PURA VIDA...
"Dealing with troubling modern themes. In "Pura Vida," by Paul Peditto, the main character is an American who makes a killing in the stock market, moves to Costa Rica and becomes caught up in the netherworld of that country's thriving sex trade."--NEW YORK TIMES
"We learn (about) prostitution, taste blackberry daiquiris and grilled filet of dorado stuffed with shrimp, see ramshackle bodegas, cloud forests and "six-color sunsets," and spend a lot of time vicariously drinking in the steamy evenings. Alternately testosterone-driven or lyrically rueful...Pura Vida delivers the goods."--CHICAGO FREE PRESS
"In the spirit of Malcom Lowry's 'Under The Volcano" and much of Hemingway, you get solid storytelling from this one-man memoir by Chicago writer Paul Peditto...delievered in a laid-back, film noir stream of consciousness, it draws on the mystique of the ugly American and the comedy of fish-out-of-water to portray a culture clash that could fuel a good B-movie."---CHICAGO FREE PRESS
"A saga of Fear and Loathing in Margaritaville...its allegory of folly and redemption speaks with universal voice to pilgrims progressing toward a mythic earthly paradise."---WINDY CITY TIMES
(Press for Pura Vida, the stage play based on the novel, produced at Live Bait Theater, Chicago, July '03.)
U.S $9.95