{"product_id":"9781466882386","title":"Saltwater Cowboy: The Rise and Fall of a Marijuana Empire","description":"\u003cp\u003eIn 1979, Wisconsin native Tim McBride hopped into his Mustang and headed south. He was twenty-one, and his best friend had offered him a job working as a crab fisherman in Chokoloskee Island, a town of fewer than 500 people on Florida's Gulf Coast. Easy of disposition and eager to experience life at its richest, McBride jumped in with both feet.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eBut this wasn't a typical fishing outfit. McBride had been unwittingly recruited into a band of smugglers--middlemen between a Colombian marijuana cartel and their distributors in Miami. His elaborate team comprised fishermen, drivers, stock houses, security--seemingly all of Chokoloskee Island was in on the operation. As McBride came to accept his new role, tons upon tons of marijuana would pass through his hands.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThen the federal government intervened in 1984, leaving the crew without a boss and most of its key players. McBride, now a veteran smuggler, was somehow spared. So when the Colombians came looking for a new middle-man, they turned to him.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMcBride became the boss of an operation that was ultimately responsible for smuggling 30 million pounds of marijuana. A self-proclaimed \"Saltwater Cowboy,\" he would evade the Coast Guard for years, facing volatile Colombian drug lords and risking betrayal by romantic partners until his luck finally ran out.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eA tale of crime and excess, \u003ci\u003eSaltwater Cowboy \u003c\/i\u003eis the gripping memoir of one of the biggest pot smugglers in American history.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"St. Martin's Publishing Group","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":47144007958768,"sku":"9781466882386","price":2.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0737\/7593\/9824\/files\/9781466882386_p0.jpg?v=1769892215","url":"https:\/\/shop-qa.barnesandnoble.com\/products\/9781466882386","provider":"Barnes \u0026 Noble (DEV)","version":"1.0","type":"link"}