Lynda Lohr, The Daily News March 16, 2001
"...A potpourri of stories by St. John resident Gerald Singer and other island residents."


Teddi Davis, St. Thomas St. John This Week, October 2001
Whatever your connection to St. John, you'll be pleased to know that Gerald Singer has created two must-have publications


Lynda Lohr, The Daily News, March 16, 2001
Stories about Caribbean life and people,island characters and places that will be well known to the readers.


Book Description
An elegant and friendly book of short stories that people can carry to the beach with them and taste the flavor of the islands. "Tales of St. John and the Caribbean" has some something for everyone, island characters, adventures at sea, hurricanes, folk tales, island history, pirates and buried treasures.


From the Back Cover
Written by locals, for locals, and for those who want to feel like locals... Tales of St. John and the Caribbean is about... The time that Art the Painter took Janis Joplin out sailing A young West Indian's first encounter with a white person The five-year-old John Gibney's impressions of his neighbor, Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer, "the father of the atomic bomb." Adventures at sea, hurricanes, pirates and buried treasure Island characters, folk tales and supernatural beings A feeling for the islands that you won't find in any guidebook


About the Author
Gerald Singer came to the Virgin Islands in 1969. He became a commercial fisherman in partnership with John Gibney. He later managed a vacation rental villa and served as a captain and guide for "adventure" boat charters. He is the author of the popular guidebook "St. John Off the Beaten Track" and writes a weekly column sponsored by St. John's Marina Market appearing on the back page of the Tradewinds newspaper. "Tales of St. John and the Caribbean" is collection of stories collected by Gerald Singer and written by him and the following authors: Jack Andrews, a successful entrepreneur and talented writer, is best known on St. John as the developer of the prestigious Peter Bay Estates. He was born in New England and attended a one room school house in Nabnassett, Massachusetts. At the age of 17, he broke his neck in a diving accident and became the first person in medical history to survive a cervical spinal fusion. In the unprecedented procedure his head was wired to the rest of his body with a silver wire. Jack feels that this wire now acts as a built in antenna through which he receives otherworldly guidance. His next big project after the completion of the Upper Peter Bay development is to build a time machine atop the 962-foot-high Peter Peak in honor of Enoch and the angel Uriel. Curtney Chinnery was born in Jost Van Dyke in 1954, a time when there were no roads, cars, electricity, telephones, TVs, tourists or white people on the island. It was a time when people survived by fishing, tending gardens and raising cattle. As a youngster, he moved to Tortola and became a "water rat" diving for coins thrown into the sea by visiting tourists and sailors of the British Navy. He later served as a mate on a private yacht that sailed throughout the Caribbean. As a young man Curtney moved to New York City, receiving his education at the university of the streets. After too many misspent years in and out of trouble with the law, Mr. Chinnery (a.k.a. the Ghost) returned to the Virgin Islands where he has slowed down long enough to put a few of his stories in this book. A lively raconteur, he is now well known on St. John as a poet, storyteller and philosopher. John Gibney was born on St. John. His parents, both writers, came to the islands in the 1940s and built a house at Hawksnest Bay (now known as Gibney Beach). John, a gentle but imposing island fixture, reminiscent of a Caribbean Tarzan, still lives on Gibney Beach, along with his wife, Teri and son, Tommy, where he writes and tends his magnificent garden of tropical fruit trees. Bob Tis is a career newspaper reporter, sailor and anarchist with roots in St. John and New Hampshire. Andrew Rutnik came to St. John in 1969. An ex-hippie, dedicated family man, and grower of fine fruits and beautiful tropical foliage, Andy now serves as Commissioner of Licensing and Consumer Affairs for the Virgin Islands Government.


Excerpted from Tales of St. John and the Caribbean by Gerald Singer, Jack Andrews, Curtney Chinnery, John Gibney, Andy Rutnik, Bob Tis. Copyright © 2001. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
"A St. Thomas Airport Story" In order to fly to the United States mainland from St. Thomas, passengers must first proceed through several checkpoints. These include: ticket and boarding pass verification, customs, agriculture, immigration, the metal detector and x-ray machine at airport security, and lastly the gate agent who makes sure that no unknown persons came to your house and packed your bags for you, possibly inserting a bomb into your luggage without your knowledge. It's all pretty routine and in most cases you are just shuffled from one station to the next without much interaction with the officials. One day I was on my way to the mainland and found myself passing through the aforementioned gauntlet. It was the same old procedure, until I reached immigration. I was very early for my flight and was the only person on line. "What does the computer say about me?" I asked. "Nothing," the immigration officer replied. We then struck up a conversation about computers and the power that they hold. He told me that immigration had its own data bank, which was what he had just looked at. A great body of information was also available from a variety of other sources such as city and state police departments, FBI, CIA, DEA and Interpol. These databases were only supposed to be accessed if the immigration officer had some good reason to do so, or if a red flag came up indicating that one of these agencies had pertinent information on the individual in question. They were not to be called up indiscriminately. To illustrate the point, the officer told me a story that he had heard about an agent in St. Thomas who didn't follow the rules: It seems that one day, during a particularly slow period, an immigration officer stationed at the St. Thomas Airport became bored and decided to amuse himself by looking up information on his computer. Alleged mobster, John Gotti, had recently been in the news, and the officer, who was said to be curious about all the media attention being given to the New York City Mafia, ran Gotti's name through the computer as if he were a passenger going through immigration. I'm sure his efforts were rewarded with a cornucopia of Gotti-bits from innumerable sources, and that he was easily able to entertain himself until his next client appeared on the immigration line. Unbeknownst to the immigration officer, at the very moment that he was playing hacker with his government-issued computer, John Gotti was the subject of a super-secret, intensive surveillance carried out by several federal government agencies acting in conjunction with the New York City Police Department. He was being tailed by teams of investigators, his phones and all the payphones in his neighborhood and in places where he was known to frequent were tapped and video cameras had been installed in several strategic areas to record his movements. The long arm of the law was closing in on the supposed "capo de tutti capos" (boss of all bosses) and the cops and government agents were just about to make the biggest collar of their careers. As soon as Gotti's name went through the system, it was picked up by the computer geeks who were keeping a sharp electronic eye on Gotti and his movements. They couldn't believe the words that flashed across their computer monitors. Gotti, it seemed, had slipped through the tightly woven net and had just passed through immigration at the Cyril E. King International Airport in St. Thomas. What was he doing there? And how could this have happened? Heads were going to roll. Investigators were summarily dispatched to St. Thomas. Calls were frantically made to the chiefs of the various agencies, who filtered the shocking news down the chain of command to the operatives on the street, and the carefully thought out procedure that had been moving along without a hitch, suddenly was in a state of turmoil. Of course all the confusion was gradually sorted out, and the Gotti bust, perhaps slightly delayed, was carried out successfully. Needless to say, the career of the curious immigration officer came to an ignominious end, but his story lives on as a stern reminder that the abuse of power doesn't come without a price.

SYNOPSIS

An elegant and friendly book of short stories that people can carry to the beach with them and taste the flavor of the islands. Tales of St. John and the Caribbean has some something for everyone. All your friends who flip through your copy will want to borrow it when you're done.

ACCREDITATION