Far Shore of Paradise: A Travel Memoir

When a dysfunctional polar vortex paralyzed New Jersey in a record cold winter, Mickey Harrison loaded his van and road tripped it to sunny Florida. His serendipitous journey brings us through the best of Florida: the glittering tourist coasts, the agricultural interior, gator infested Everglades, rollicking Key West, fanciful Orlando, and Cape Canaveral where we glimpse a future glowing with hope and promise.

While Harrison relishes the vagrant's life, we enjoy the show as he invents stealth urban camping as he goes along. For starters there is the nightly noir adventure as we cruise parking lots seeking protection simultaneously from the cops and by the cops. Despite his overwhelming desire to present himself as a respectable member of society, the very fact of his van dwelling isolates him from anyone he would actually want to know. More than a laugh-out-loud travel memoir, the wandering trek of this one-time travel writer and celebrity tour guide stumbles upon Florida's radiance as well as fascinating connections to its past, present, and future.