The book is composed of interconnected stories about denizens of a beachfront guesthouse in Puerto Rico, circa 1987. The mostly off-beat characters who pass through the doors of the Solimar Guesthouse are trying to straighten out off-kilter lives; each has a unique story to tell about love, sexuality, survival. Island Wildlife looks with a canny, darkly humorous eye at the struggling humanity of its characters, while also exploring the Puerto-Rico/U.S. relationship, Cuban exile politics, and how the personal and political interrelate.