This work of Gabriel Garcia Marquez, who also received the Nobel Prize, is based on an event that has happened and has been the subject of the press. The novel A Lost Mariner describes what happened to a military ship. This ship, which belongs to the United States, experiences an imbalance due to the loads it carries on its way to Cartagena, Colombia. As a result, he drops eight of his crew sailors into the Antilles Sea. He doesn't get the opportunity to return to save them. Only one of the eight sailors who fell into the sea with various troughs reached a raft. In this way, he manages to survive. The rest suffocate and die. This only surviving seafarer is Luis Alejandro Valesco. It stands out as it is based on the real-life story among the sea-themed books.

Luis Alejandro Valesco is confident that help will come to him. When the naval ship arrives in Cartagena, it notifies the authorities. Search and rescue work begins for Valesco. A search is made for four days with the support of aircraft. However, no results are obtained and studies are stopped. The hero is faced with a situation in which he is very afraid, hungry, and thirsty.

Valesco, who suffers one of the worst disasters that can happen for a sailor, continues his life on the raft for ten days. He wants to hunt seagulls but cannot eat the gull he slaughtered because he was disgusted with blood and feathers. As time passes, he sees coconut trees on a day when he opens his eyes. Realizing that the raft is drifting towards the cliffs, Valesco swims to the shore. The woman he meets on the shore fears him. But the woman's husband helps our hero. He says that they are in Colombia. He will be taken to a hospital and treated.

Having had a very adventurous process, Valesco is awarded a medal by the President. Journalists also compete with each other to hear this story. When he is brought to the city hospital, many reporters come to see him. Thus, he becomes a well-known sailor.

The novel is fictionally ordinary. However, the fluent style used made the novel A Lost Sailor famous. The author met with Valesco for eight days while writing the novel. This novel was published under the name of Luis Alejandro Valesco as a result of two-hour interviews daily. It existed for the first time in 1970 with the signature of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The intrigue and inspiration of Luis Alejandro Valesco's story, combined with the style of Gabriel Garcia Marquez's novel, makes this novel unique.