Last Bus to Wisdom is Ivan Doig’s last novel, or so I read in the July issue of Costco Connection. Doig passed away in 2015. Wisdom is based on his upbringing on a backcountry Montana ranch where his Gran was a fabulous cook. Doig’s stories derive from the hardscrabble country life, accounts of “the proletariat of the lariat,” as he liked to say. Back in the 70’s, I was a staffer on CASCADES, a well-regarded industrial magazine with a broad reach into the people and places of the Pacific Northwest. I am proud to say we helped this gifted writer further a budding career by publishing Doig’s historical accounts of people and events. Doig went on to publish 16 distinguished novels and several memoirs full of grace, pathos, and humor. A signed copy of my favorite Doig novel, The Bartender’s Tale, titled with a sly wink to Chaucer, is one of my prized possessions.
The Unlucky Duck
“I felt like if I was able to get a life jacket I could’ve saved my babies,” Tia Coleman said in her latest bedside interview. By now, her name is likely a household word–at least for boaters like myself. Mrs. Coleman and a 13-year-old nephew were among the sole survivors of a family of 11, including her husband and three children, in the tragic sinking of a Ride the Ducks tour boat. A total of 31 passengers and crew were lost in a horrific storm on the Table Rock Lake near Branson, Missouri on the evening of July 20. A few days later, as I pace the dock at the Deer Harbor Marina here in the San Juan Islands of Washington State, I watch youngsters frolic on the decks wearing life jackets–even on the dock. I am filled with grief for those lost in a tragic sinking. Life jackets are such an integral part of boating safety that the newer ones are streamlined and colorful fashion statements with the sort of panache that encourages their use. Our local marina also maintains a dock-side stash of bulky orange loaners offered to anyone who needed a life preserver for some impromptu outing. A Duck boat such as the one the Coleman family rode in is an amphibious truck–modeled on a DUCK military vehicle originally built to haul support equipment for the Normandy invasion in World War II. Military style DUCK vessels are still in use in some ten nations.
Although modifications have been made to stabilize these boats for recreational use, a Duck is not so seaworthy in the freakish storm that arose as if from nowhere. Winds were clocked at 73 mph, and have been described as “straight line,” as opposed to the circular pattern of a tornado, swamping the Duck vessel in a pair of four-foot waves.
The vessel the Coleman family rode was one of a pair of Ducks that headed out on a 60-minute tour in the face of a National Weather Service storm warning issued around noon, or so Mrs. Coleman recalled. Ride the Duck vessels are equipped with life jackets of all sizes as decreed by maritime law, and passengers were informed the jackets were above their heads. However, the captain of the vessel remarked that life jackets wouldn’t be needed, or so Mrs. Coleman said. We have yet to hear anything but condolences from the Ride the Ducks concession, which has a safety record extending back some forty years. And it is true that storm warnings are notoriously unreliable, as anyone who has faced hurricane or tornado warnings well knows. Nevertheless, “It is hard for anyone wearing a life jacket to drown,” was a bystander’s laconic observation, and I have to agree. A second warning for Table Rock Lake was issued around 6:30 p.m. One Duck did survive, while the other immediately began taking on water, suggesting the possible failure of a bilge pump.
As Mrs. Coleman recalled, the passengers were advised to remain in their seats. Perhaps the ride was so rough by then that anyone reaching overhead for a life jacket might well be injured or even thrown from the vessel. Maritime law leaves the judgment of the vessel operator as to when to urge passengers to don life jackets. When the facts are in, the scores of unused life jackets buried in 40 feet of water along with what remains of the unlucky Duck will make the case as Mrs. Coleman sees it. Until the facts prove otherwise, I share her grief and her stoic recrimination. As the Ducks turned tail and headed for shore, some 30 minutes elapsed before the vessel the Colemans were riding in was swamped and sunk. Was this not time enough to warn passengers to put on their life jackets?
Need Money Laundering?
Need Money Laundering?
Let Sara's Laundry give your bills an old-fashioned soak!
What's the Story?
Two American Pen Women Authors PresentWhat's the Story?You are invited to join a readers and writers round-table discussion of the mystery genre, the craft of writing and the business of publishing.WHEN: Friday, June 19, 10 a.m. to noon |
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Members of the National League of American Pen Women offer community outreach programs.
This event is free of charge but space is limited.
To reserve a seat call (360-376-6655) or e-mail Sara Williams at swnovelist@gmail.com.
I use 300 gallons of CA water a week?
I use 300 gallons of CA water a week? No way. This must be a misprint, or so I thought when I read this bizarre statistic. As it happened, Mr. B and I had just consumed a whole avocado stuffed with tuna salad for lunch before I stumbled upon these startling statistics.
http://p.nytimes.com/
ONE BIG ITCH
SARA WILLIAMS, ONE BIG ITCH: A JOHN SPYERS MYSTERY
Soft-boiled sleuth John 'Oluhana Maalaea Spyer is a conflicted "hapa haole" (half white) who is a polynesian at the core, too nice to be in the detective business, but too much of a haole to pay attention when the mercurial fire goddess Madam Pele herself warns him off the Haverhill case. "Something new under the tropical sun, a Hawaiian regional mystery of the Tony Hillerman type, which serves to explore the unique Hawaiian culture." MysteryNet.com
Sara Williams and her husband Bill landed on the Island of Maui in their own sailboat some thirty years ago, intent on visiting an old friend. They loved Hawaii so much that they opened a business in Lahaina and stayed for a decade. Sara, a magazine writer and newspaper reporter, became engrossed in the fascinating art, history and culture of Hawaii. One Big Itch, set in Honolulu during the Aloha Week Festival, is Sara's excuse to talk story about Hawaii through the voice of John Spyer, a soft-hearted sleuth who has been rattling around in her subconscious for decades.
When not sojourning in the Hawaiian Islands, the Williamses are usually to be found in their other favorite haunts, the San Juan Islands of Washington State, or in the Florida Gulf Coast city of Fort Myers, the DeLeon of Sara's first novel, The Don Juan Con, which was optioned in Hollywood by producer Robert Evans for Paramount Studios.
The Serenoa Scandal
The Serenoa Scandal by Sara Williams
The Serenoa Scandal is a fascinating blend of murder and mayhem, of love and loss, and human drama played out against a backdrop that ranges from Florida's cattle ranches to the New York Commodities Exchange. Sara Williams is a gifted writer who writes smoothly, silkily against either background. This is a book you don't want to put down and when you've finished the last page, you want more.
A prominent South Florida rancher is murdered in cold blood in his wife’s arms. The DEA raids her beloved Serenoa Ranch and seizes her property. The harassing phone calls start—again. For Maya Menecal, her idyllic life is thrust into a horrifying nightmare.
Puttnam Jorgenson, the editor of the local newspaper in the small town of Sabal Springs, Florida comes to the rescue, inviting his close friend and former DEA agent, John Spyers, from Maui, Hawaii to join him on a twisting and turning investigation into conspiracy, political corruption, and murder—all designed to conceal a deadly secret that could tear a community and an entire state apart.
This strongly character-driven page-turner is sure to delight all true Mystery-Suspense aficionados. Sara Williams’ characters leap off the page and into your hearts. Her intricate story is woven from the threads of the true-crimes and scandals she investigated and reported as a journalist
The Don Juan Con
The Don Juan Con by Sara Williams
This complex and ever-twisting thriller is torn from the headlines of actual events, an all-too-common crime that often goes unreported and unpunished. In The Don Juan Con a flamboyant swindler calling himself Anthony Abruzzi wines and dines unsuspecting women from one end of the country to the other, seducing them into marrying him within days of meeting him. Yet just before the lavish whirlwind weddings are to take place, he disappears, absconding with whatever assets, meager or mighty, his victims possessed.
Yet when he makes the mistake of jilting and bankrupting Angie Reynolds, a designer living in DeLeon, FL, his fortunes are about to be reversed. With the help of police detective Joe Vensure, Angie meticulously hunts Anthony down, following his trail of broken-hearted and devastated victims. She is further shocked to discover that not all of his marks were merely jilted -- some are dead. It becomes a race against time itself when she discovers that her own mother may be his next victim. And nothing can prepare her for learning the mysterious secret of her own past that started it all. The Don Juan Con
Millie McCall's Full Moon Poker Night
Millie McCall's Full Moon Poker Night: Tales from the San Juan Islands and the Pacific Northwest
Millie McCall is an exuberant, Harley-riding character who hosts scandalous poker parties for the local fellows wearing her red negligee. Young Jim Halprin is a stand-in at the party, forewarned to flee the moment the last card slaps the table. A swaggering Harley rider himself, Jim bonds with Mrs. McCall instead, as she absorbs lunar energy, shedding her disheveled appearance, becoming a tantalizing beauty. Jim rescues Millie’s flashy Harley from destruction by juvenile predators but Millie laughs off the pranksters and leads Jim off on a wild chase in the wrong direction over the twisting roads of Orcas, the most rugged and dangerous of the San Juan Islands. Millie is evading her keepers and tormenting her husband, or so Jim soon learns. He finds himself on a mad ride on the night of the full moon, terrified to learn that Mrs. McCall’s freedom ride is meant to last forever. Millie McCall's Full Moon Poker Night