Once Upon An Island - Softcover

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Theresa Foley is a novelist and journalist who lives and works in Key West. She is one of a dozen writers featured in this collection. The others include Judy Adams, Margit Bisztray, Rosalind Brackenbury, Barbara Bowers, Kirby Congdon, J.T. Eggers, Danne Hughes, Allen Meece, Robin Orlandi, Deanna O'Shaughnessy and William Williamson.

Aus dem Klappentext

Key West. A place for boat captains from hell, men and women prowling for love, the dreamers, the lovers, the wanderers. Paradise has many faces, many stories, many charms. This collection from 12 new writers will take you through the little lanes and back alleys, to the cemetery, into the shaded backyards of broken down Conch houses and out beyond the reef in a literary exploration of the invisible side of this famous little island.

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I used to drink but things happened to me. Take this, for instance. "I think Adam knows how to navigate," said the Hot Dog Man to a bland middle class manager-type who was out of place at the Schooner Wharf Bar. He was forty five and wore Sebago deck moccasins like none of us bothered to buy. With his white Bermudas he belonged in the Pier House with the other boat-owners.

"That's right," I said. I'd had a few beers. I was a shrimper on the "Henny Penny" and wanted to get off the rock for a while. My captain wasn't catching shit and was holed-up on land, drinking and screwing.

I'd studied the charts we'd sailed across but never used "navigation" without drawing lines on a map. I could get where I wanted to go and if owners call that navigation, then I was a navigator.

"This is John Hell and he needs somebody to navigate his boat down to Gitmo."

"Glad to meet you, Hell. I've been to Gitmo before." I'd spent a couple of days there on my destroyer when I was in the Navy. He was impressed. He came closer and said what he wanted to do.

"I have to leave at midnight. My vacation time is almost over and I have to be back on the job in five days. I'm in charge of the civil servants down in Gitmo."

"There's a lot of water between here and Guantanamo," I said.

It was a seven hundred mile trip. The summer trades were good out of the northeast so we wouldn't have to tack much. It would take six days if we averaged five knots around the clock and nothing broke.