“When opportunity  
presents itself,  
don’t be afraid  
to go after it.”
Eddie Kennison

Only in retrospect am I able to look back and recognize the amazing opportunity that was presented to me when I was twenty years old. That’s when I was invited to devote one year of my life to teaching in a high school in The Bahamas. I didn’t hesitate to accept the offer, and that has made all the difference in my life.

I am pleased to announce that my most recent publication, A Bahamian Odyssey, is now available online from Amazon. This book details my adventures as a first-year teacher working in a Catholic high school in Nassau during the 1973-74 academic year.

For more than fifty years, I’ve wanted to share this story. The words of author Neil Gaiman played a huge role in my finally doing so. He challenges us to tell the stories that only we can tell, “…because there will always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that, but you are the only you.” There is no one else in the entire world qualified to write this book, because it’s my unique story, my exclusive experience, so it’s up to me to write it. And now it’s finished.

It’s liberating to know that this book does not need to be perfect. It’s not. In terms of literary quality, no doubt there are better books, yet I am confident that A Bahamian Odyssey is a valuable contribution to the literary world. John Steinbeck once said, “If there is a magic in story writing, and I’m convinced there is, no one has ever been able to reduce it to a recipe that can be passed from one person to another.” I am confident that there is magic in this book. Perhaps the magic is the simple honesty with which I have written each story. 

It was, indeed, a magical year. I’m grateful for the opportunity to share it with readers here at home and in The Bahamas.