WASHINGTON, D.C. — Around this time last year, I was looking forward to a promotional tour for my recently released novel WOES OF LIFE. In preparation for my trip to Freeport, Grand Bahama, I sent copies to my friend Billy Jane Ferguson, a former President of the Rotary Club of Lucaya, in which I was a member when I was Editor of the Freeport News.
After Billy’s tenure as President ended, she continued to be very active in the Rotary Club of Lucaya activities and made arrangements for me to do a book-signing at the club’s luncheon meeting on Tuesday, October 17, 2017.
More than six weeks after copies of WOES OF LIFE were mail by parcel post to Billy, she had not yet received them, so when I went to Freeport in mid-October I took some copies with me. It was a good that I did because the books I had mailed had still not arrived by the time my book-signing took place at the Rotary Club of Lucaya luncheon held at the Ruby Swiss Restaurant.
I had all but given up on them ever reaching Freeport, but yesterday I received the following message in my Facebook inbox from Billy: “Good Morning Oswald. I got the books yesterday. They finally came and the date stamped on the box was August 23, 2017. A few of them are mashed but the others are good. So tell me, what do you want me to do with them?”
This is beyond belief. I am still wondering how is it possible that it has taken more than a year for a shipment of books from Washington, D.C. to reach Freeport, Grand Bahama. I have lightheartedly concluded that the consignment sent to Billy “came to life” and decided to take A TRIP AROUND THE WORLD IN A YEAR and those that are “mashed” were apparently damaged by a suicide bomb in Afghanistan.
Levity aside, copies of WOES OF LIFE that were shipped to Nassau around the same time to my good friend, the late Bryan Wright, did not get to Nassau until several months after his death on October 19, 2017. After my book-signing at the Rotary Club of Lucaya luncheon, I flew to Nassau on the first Bahamasair flight Wednesday for a scheduled 9:30 a.m. presentation of WOES OF LIFE to Her Excellency Dame Marguerite Pindling, Governor General of The Bahamas.
That night, I met Bryan for drinks at a club in Palmdale where he and a number of my other friends used to “hang out” daily. After I left the club Bryan suffered a massive heart attack, and when I returned to SuperClubs Breezes, where I generally stay on my visits to Nassau, I received a call from a friend about the untimely death of my very, very dear friend.
Bryan was a die-hard Los Angeles Dodgers baseball fan, and if he were alive today, he would most certainly be celebrating the fact that the Dodgers won their division and will square off against the Atlanta Braves on Thursday, October 4, in the first game of the playoffs for the division title. He would be happy to know that now that my beloved Washington Nationals did not make the playoffs, I am pulling for the Dodgers to go all the way and win the World Series.
But back to my WOES OF LIFE saga. When Bryan’s daughter Liesl Wright emailed me several months ago and informed me that the books I mailed last August had arrived, I was shocked, even though I had heard horror stories about The Bahamas’ postal system over the past decade or so. Because I had to cancel my book-signings scheduled for Nassau last October, I asked Liesl to deliver them to Pam Burnside at Doongalik Studios, which had agreed to be a sales outlet and had received some copies of WOES OF LIFE last November via a Miami address that they use. So those of you in Nassau who have not yet read WOES OF LIFE, copies are still available at Doongalik.
Trust me, you’ll enjoy reading it, and those of you who are old enough to have followed political developments in The Bahamas in the late 1950s and 1960s will be absolutely certain that you know who some of the characters are based upon. But as I continue to say to those who make this claim, any similarities to persons living or dead are purely coincidental.
As far as those copies that Billy has just received, anyone in Freeport who has not yet read WOES OF LIFE and would like to purchase a copy, Billy has agreed to personally deliver it to you. During her tenure as Rotary Club of Lucaya President, Billy exemplified through her actions – while being described by her Rotary colleagues as “Miss Sunshine” — the true meaning of Rotary’s motto, SERVICE ABOVE SELF. Once again she is demonstrating this commitment to that altruistic motto by agreeing to assist a former Rotary colleague in promoting the sales of his book. You can contact Billy at: (242) 727-3435.
Give her a call. Heaven knows I can certainly use the money as I seek to establish a solid financial foundation for THE BROWN AGENCY, my public relations and advertising company, and my online news publication, BAHAMAS CHRONICLE.
WOES OF LIFE is also available in Freeport at Bell Channel Inn and on Amazon and my website: www.oswaldtbrown.com.
