Tortuga


Book Description

American Book Award Winner: A novel of a New Mexico teenager’s journey of physical and spiritual recovery from the author of Bless Me, Ultima. When the story opens, the eponymous hero of Rudolfo Anaya’s novel is in an ambulance en route to a hospital for crippled children in the New Mexican desert. A poor boy from Albuquerque, sixteen-year-old Tortuga takes his name from the odd, turtle-shaped mountain that is rumored to possess miraculous curative powers. Tortuga is paralyzed, and not even his mother’s fervent prayers can heal him. But under the mountain’s watchful gaze, with the support of fellow patients, he begins the Herculean task of breaking out of his shell and becoming whole again. Drawn from personal experience and imbued with the phantasmagorical vision quests that distinguish Anaya’s work, Tortuga is a joyful, life-sustaining book about hope, faith, friendship, and love that celebrates the triumph of the human spirit in the physical world. “An extraordinary storyteller.” —Los Angeles Times Book Review




Far Tortuga


Book Description

An adventure story and a deeply considered meditation upon the sea itself. "Beautiful and original...a resonant and symbolical story of nine doomed men who dream of an earthly paradise as the world winds down around them." —Newsweek




Tortuga


Book Description

A tortoise caught in a storm is washed up on a remote island and tries to protect her newly laid eggs. But a flock of sea birds raids her nest, so exhausted and sad she begins her lonely search for a mate. Paul Geraghty, winner of the Children's Book Award, beautifully charts this voyage of survival- and renewal.




Turtles of the World


Book Description




La Tortuga


Book Description

A retelling of the traditional tale of the old and wise turtle outwitting the village children.




Tortuga


Book Description

Cayona, 1669: The streets are not mean, they are downright vicious in the pirate port of Tortuga. Orphans like Jack Higgins scratch a living from errands and mugging drunken pirates, roaming the taverns, whorehouses, alleys, and gambling dens in search of prey, or a dropped penny. The tales told around tavern tables are tall and exotic: sea battles, typhoons, tortures, cannibal islands, lost cites, haunted jewels, rare honey, great treasures won with blood. They incite cruel laughter, dry asides, grim shakes of the head, and dubious guffaws. Jack, just months from manhood, sees little hope of adding to these tales. But during a hurricane's deluge Jack pulls a retching body from the flooded street. It is Old Kit, Cayona's patriarch, by legend oldest man in the Caribbean. Jack's reward is to be his prot�g� and scion. He is learning fast, wearing his first boots, received at the best brothels, meeting those who control the town and mock the pirates as fools. But can Kit's battered health hold long enough for Jack to learn to survive Cayona's literally cutthroat commerce? To win the merchant's niece he craves? Jack discovers ancient Kit owes his unnaturally long life to a dead Arawak shaman's "magic" stone, now near useless. Jack treks to Hispaniola's high country to find the shaman's holy cave - and a new stone. One touch tips him into a terrifying hallucination; or a reality where the Indian dead still live and speak. Jack must escape it and return to Tortuga to save Old Kit, his own future, and soon his own life.




The Turtles of Mexico


Book Description

The Turtles of Mexico is the first comprehensive guide to the biology, ecology, evolution, and distribution of more than fifty freshwater and terrestrial turtle taxa found in Mexico. Legler and Vogt draw on more than fifty years of fieldwork to elucidate the natural history of these species. The volume includes an extensive introduction to turtle anatomy, taxonomy, phylogeny, biogeography, and physiology. A key to the turtles of Mexico is included along with individual species accounts featuring geographic distribution maps and detailed color illustrations. Specific topics discussed for each species include habitat, diet, feeding behavior, reproduction, predators, parasites, growth and ontogeny, sexual dimorphism, growth rings, economic use, conservation, legal protection, and taxonomic studies. This book is a complete reference for scientists, conservationists, and professional and amateur enthusiasts who wish to study Mexican turtles.




In the Eye of All Trade


Book Description

The first social history of eighteenth-century Bermuda, this book profiles how one especially intensive maritime community capitalized on its position "in the eye of all trade." Jarvis takes readers aboard small Bermudian sloops as they shuttled cargoes between ports, raked salt, salvaged shipwrecks, hunted whales, captured prizes, and smuggled contraband in an expansive maritime sphere spanning Great Britain's North American and Caribbean colonies. He shows how humble sailors and seafaring slaves operating small family-owned vessels were significant but underappreciated agents of Atlantic integration. The American Revolution shattered interregional links that Bermudians had helped to forge. Reliant on North America for food and customers, Bermudians faced disaster. A bold act of treason enabled islanders to continue trade with their rebellious neighbors and helped them to survive and even prosper in an Atlantic world at war. Ultimately, however, the creation of the United States ended Bermuda's economic independence and doomed the island's maritime economy.