The reader is invited to a novel by an American writer of Italian origin, Robert Girardi, author of the books “The Phantom of Madeleine” (1995) and “The Pirate’s Daughter” (1997). The central character of the story is a distant descendant of the Irish pirate Finster Doyle, ordinary American Tim Doyle, in the unusual vicissitudes of whose fate every now and then his adventurous and romantic origin reminds of itself. Tim, a tramp, womanizer and drinker, caught by his wife in the act of adultery, leaves her and their son in Spain and leaves with his mistress for Paris, from where four months later, having caught his mistress with her Arab lover, he goes home to America. Upon returning to the New World, he finds an unexpected inheritance in the form of Pirate Island with countless treasures supposedly buried there and a dilapidated mini-golf course. An attempt to settle in a new place meets desperate resistance from ill-wishers unknown to Tim: after threats, arson and a shootout, he is given the corpse of an opossum, of which he is then accused by officials from the Fish and Game Service. The desire to uncover the secret of the inheritance involves the hero in a series of tragicomic situations and introduces him to a string of extravagant characters, including the classically educated village mechanic Toby, the Irish homosexual gangster O'Mara and the glamorous trash diva Maggie Peach... The grotesque characters and extravagant circumstances of the book present the reader with a unique an ironic catalog of stereotypes of American culture, revealing their deep historical origins.