The Last Resort: Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach

“The Last Resort: Chronicle of Paradise, Profit, and Peril at the Beach”
 by Sarah Stodola
2022/Ecco
$27.99/352 pages

Some 13 years ago, nursing the wounds from an abrupt break-up, Sarah Stodola headed for what turned out to be the balm her soul needed: a semi-secluded beach on a peninsula in Thailand.

She swam in warm waters near white sand that was often nearly empty. She drank island beers with new friends. She came home, refreshed and looking with a new eye at why we love to go on vacation at the beach.

And there are plenty of choices for a beach resort getaway: Monte Carlo, which became a vacation destination because of a broke prince’s shrewd wife; Hawaii, the shores of which require constant work; Fiji, which exists, in part, thanks to a former U.S. Air Force base; Nicaragua, which struggles to attract visitors; Tulum, in which the resorts are not hooked up to the power grid nor the sewer systems.

But these popular resort destinations, like so many others around the world, could be gone in a few decades, Stodola says.

She takes readers past the palm trees and marble floors onto a back veranda to look at what’s gone wrong with the environment around the beach resorts we love to visit, why near-constant maintenance is required today, and why things aren’t getting any better. It’s like bending down to sniff a lush island flower, only to find that it’s artificial.