Gilbert A. Sprauve

AUTHOR

Gilbert A. Sprauve

AUTHOR

I am a retired Foreign Language Professor at the University of the Virgin Islands. I first taught in Guinea and Sierra Leone, West Africa. The setting for my first published story was a public gathering in Freetown, Sierra Leone. The story was entitled “The Queue.” It was published in The Literary Review at Farleigh Dickinson in the Winter, 1964 edition. I am an avid fisherman and tennis player.

Captain Ton-Ton Da-Da, the skipper of the fishing craft Bossal Snare, sets sail for the blue water banks with a crew of West Indians of different backgrounds, island origins, and ages. Shortly after arriving at the bank, the vessel is disabled. In the past, the captain had provided critical guidance to safe haven to a certain party boat named Dixie Island Girl when this vessel got lost on its first trip to these waters. Adrift in the C-Kraal (Caribbean Sea), the skipper and crew entertain themselves with tales (including one about a horrific incident while fishing over a haunted wreck). The main preoccupation of Skipper Ton-Ton is two vessels, namely Dixie, which on occasion has disturbed his fishing, and the Enforcers, who are known to conduct destructive searches of suspicious vessels. Many tales are told as the vessel drifts on a calm sea. Through the heavy mist, an official vessel appears and carries out a rescue.

Pell-Mell: … So We Live!
It shares a collection of brief, often poignant anecdotes that provide a whimsical glimpse into how people live in the Caribbean, West Indies, and the Virgin Islands. In Pell-Mell, justice and nature fuse into one, parenting is skittish, a fugitive blue mongoose is caught red-handed, and the stork learns that delivering babies is safer.

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