Description: A "Trip to the Beach" is a true story about fleeing civilization to build a restaurant in a tiny island paradise -- Anguilla, in this case -- and discovering that paradise doesn't just happen. Authors Bob and Melinda Blanchard -- as winning a couple as you'll ever meet -- recount a story filled with calamities worthy of a screwball comedy, culinary mishaps and triumphs, and indelible portraits of people who work in a place where the rest of the world goes to play. A "Trip to the Beach" is about the maddening, exhausting, impossible complications of trying to live the simple life -- and the incredible joy that comes when you somehow pull it off.

The story began in Vermont, where to their dismay the Blanchards found their successful gourmet food business was actually not in their control, but in the control of their viperous investors. Fed up, they decide, perhaps impulsively, to get away from it all and take a trip to their favorite Caribbean island, hoping to recover their equilibrium and devise a new plan for their future. Once they get to the beach, not surprisingly, they decide to stay for good. They rent a dilapidated house and prepare, against all common sense and to the bemusement of the locals, to turn a crumbling beach shack into a great restaurant -- just before reality sets in.

The story continues with the trials, tribulations and many rewards the Blanchards experience as they open up their restaurant -- called Blanchard's -- to immediate and smashing success. Lauded by the international travel and food press, it becomes a hot spot patronized by a host of celebrities. Throughout the book the Blanchards provide a few of the delicious recipes that helped make theirrestaurant such a great hit, a fusion of Cajun, Caribbean and Asian cooking. Readers become familiar with the local inhabitants and share the Blanchards' initiation and acceptance into the culture they've decided to call home, regardless of what Mother Nature and the vicissitudes of island bureaucracy throw against them. Despite back-breaking work and a relationship tested to its limits, the Blanchards continue to delight in their tropical paradise. Until Hurricane Luis. The Blanchards give a gripping account of the monster storm that destroyed much of Anguilla and all of their restaurant -- except their 3,000-bottle wine cellar!

Undaunted, the Blanchards pick up the pieces and rebuild. A "Trip to the Beach" leaves readers with a vision of this amazing couple, arms around each other, the Caribbean sun pouring its light upon them, as they decide to give it one more try -- and on it goes, a story for every reader to place themselves into with delight.

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