www.DropDead.com

L.B. (Laughing Boy) Owen gets a reprieve temporarily from his distressful life in a seedy California beach town - Cacateria - when his small publisher offers him an expense-paid trip to Mexico to verify the credentials of Bernard de Verteuial, the company's former wonderboy who has irretrievably disappeared only to reappear with his latest tour de force "Monica's Monthlies."Owen travels to Zopilote, Oaxaca, one of the few existing turtle sanctuaries allowing the turtles by the thousands to lay their eggs unmolested.Gaye Liebfraumilch is a young German girl, drawn to Zopilote to witness the presence of her beloved turtles in their natural splendor. Owen meets Gaye at Bernard's villa.Gaye and Owen, inspite of their age differences-he is over 60, she is in her early twenties - form a tentative relationship, and by the time it is romantically full-blown it is too late for her friends, the turtles. The final denouement is an all too familiar neo liberal disaster: the treaty (protecting the turtles)signed by the Mexical government istrampled underfoot by a consortium of foreign poachers who succeed in convincing the World Trade Organization that the protected sanctuary is a restraint on Free Trade.WWW.DropDead.Com is also a hilarious satire about affluent Santa Barbara, California.Epstein, Richard F. is the author of 'www.DropDead.com', published 2004 under ISBN 9781413434750 and ISBN 1413434754.