“A book is a gift you can open again and again.” –Garrison Keillor
The 2020 holiday season is unlike any in modern history. At a time when households are asked to minimize social interaction with family and friends and restrict travel, even for beloved seasonal celebrations—due to a global pandemic that shows no sign of surrender—the best gift that one can give or receive is the gift of escape.
The holiday will not be the same for many people, but that does not mean people still can’t travel. Thanks to the imagination, dedication to research, and the ability to paint an image with words, Galveston authors have created journeys that will take readers back in time, into the future, and into space, and deep into murder and mayhem—without leaving the comfort of home.
“As a child, I used to think receiving a book as a gift was better than an article of clothing, but not as good as a toy. Now I think books are the perfect gifts,” says Galveston author Saralyn Richard, who wrote the celebrated 2013 children's picture book Naughty Nana as well as three whodunits, the latest of which will be released January 8, 2021 (www.SaralynRichard.com).
“Books are durable, quiet, easy to wrap, and filled with the promise of many hours of thought-provoking entertainment and escape.”
In addition to Richard’s body of work which will be featured in the January 2021 edition, several other local authors have written books that are worthy of a spot beneath the tree.
ALVIN L. SALLEE
Author Alvin L. Sallee is a professor at heart. As such, he takes his research seriously and most especially when chronicling the link between Galveston Island, the sea, and the men and women who used both to their advantage. In the process, they helped shape a city.
In Galveston Wharf Stories: Characters, Captains & Cruises (2019), Sallee reveals the labyrinthine maze of politics, engineering, and economics of a thriving wharf. Whether a maritime professional who makes a living from the sea or someone interested in the salty life, Sallee’s books more than whet the appetite.
Through first-hand experiences of his worldwide travels, personal reflections, and conversations with maritime professionals, the author—and former Galveston Daily News columnist—offers an engrossing narrative of the sea and those who make it their life’s work.
“It is impossible to know Galveston without knowing the wharves, the ships, and most of all, the people. Folks know that, but ports remain largely mysterious,” says Sallee, an amateur sailor who served as a visiting professor at the University of Houston, and is an admitted “wharf rat.”
In compiling the book, he went down to the docks and boarded cruise ships, World War II warships, banana boats, and tankers, to find history and human-interest stories to put on the page. “Sea tales are passed down,” he explains, “and this book captures them in a free-form style.”
The book includes an extensive chapter on the Galveston Naval Museum at Seawolf Park where the USS Cavalla is berthed, a WWII submarine with a rich maritime history. “The Museum is living history. You can walk and touch where sailors who saved the world, worked and fought,” says Sallee, a board member of the Cavalla Historical Foundation that oversees the museum.
“I began as a volunteer scraping rust, and then violated my pledge to never go to another committee meeting in my life. I became a Cavalla Historical Foundation board member, being secretary, vice president, and then president/CEO, and now director emeritus, which means I go back to cleaning the bilge,” he laughs. It’s a labor of love, no matter the duties or responsibilities.
“Most of my relatives including my dad were in the U.S. Navy, and this is a small way I can repay them and others for their service,” Alvin says. “My favorite college course to teach was the History of Social Welfare. I enjoy history, so this was a perfect fit.”
The author recently relocated to his hometown—Albuquerque, New Mexico, blocks from the National Forest in the Sandia Mountains. But the sea still calls like a siren song. He is currently at work on Sea Stories, Galveston and Beyond: The Seafarer and the Professor, with fellow writer Mike Leady.
“It should go to press in a couple of months,” he says. “It includes a chapter on the Galveston Naval Museum with 20 never seen before photos taken on the USS Stewart during World War II.”
He is also penning an homage to his grandfather titled World's Best Grandpa Ever and working on a murder mystery entitled The Galveston Affair. “It’s the story of a young woman newspaper reporter, whose boss is murdered on the USS Stewart,” he said. “The ‘telling’ part of the book is finished, but need to do the ‘showing’ writing. Maybe next year.”
Galveston Wharf Stories: Characters, Captains & Cruises is available at Galveston Bookshop and museums on the island and on Amazon.com.
KIMBER FOUNTAIN
Texas Gulf Coast native Kimber Fountain has been lauded for her devotion to the Island’s colorful and inspiring history. Her works include The Maceos and The Free State of Galveston: An Authorized History (2020), Galveston's Red Light District: A History of The Line (2018), and Galveston Seawall Chronicles (2017). With each book, Fountain pores over historic archives and photos to capture the essence of the subject matter, often including never-before-seen photos and documents.
“I am fascinated with history in general, because it elucidates the evolution of mankind—it reveals the strength of the human spirit, our unceasing ability to innovate, and our indefatigable quest for enlightenment and progress,” Fountain says.
“Therein, few historical subjects embody these aspects as well as Galveston. The island’s perpetual ability to thrive amid conditions where others would barely survive is just amazing to me.”
In Galveston’s Red Light District, Fountain traces the 70-year existence of Galveston’s prostitution district on Postoffice Street, centering her theme upon why the district existed and how it was a direct reflection of the arbitrary moral standards and restrictions on women’s rights in the first half of the 20th Century.
“Beyond the mere history lover, the Seawall Chronicles is a must-read for anyone in the civil engineering field. Anyone interested in women’s rights and the history of feminism will appreciate the Red Light book, and the Maceo book is a universally intriguing tale that everyone will enjoy—it has action, adventure, tragedy, triumph, glamour, prestige, politics, suspense, scandal, compassion, community, philanthropy, and humor,” she says.
“Most importantly, they all provide a perspective—both in theme and content—that is wholly unique within the realm of Galveston history.”
Fountain shares her research expertise of the subject off the page as well. She launched The Red Light District Tours of Galveston in March of 2019. “The tour offers a fascinating journey through the forgotten parts of downtown Galveston that were once bustling with wild parties and generous offerings of love by the hour—or fifteen minutes,” Fountain says with a wink.
The tour features buildings and houses where brothels operated, information about why the district existed for nearly seventy years, and describes what life was like for women on “The Line,” as the brothels’ locale was dubbed.
Tours are given by Kimber herself, held Wednesday-Saturday at 5pm (October-April) and at 7pm (May-September). Reservations are required. Tickets are $25 per person and can be purchased at RLDTG.com. (Hey, holiday shoppers: Gift certificates are available!)
“The thing about all of my books (and even the tour) is that all of them are really American history, simply told through a Galveston lens. I consider myself an investigative researcher, which means that I seek to find the answers to history’s questions, not just to regurgitate facts and figures,” she says. Without re-visiting history, we cannot hope to better shape or understand the future, Fountain explains.
“I have a personal philosophy that has allowed me to illuminate these pieces of Galveston history far more than their face value allows. Especially the red light and Maceo books have given me a platform to discuss important and often misunderstood topics such as unconstitutional laws that target victimless crimes, the perils of government overreach, the disastrous effects of prohibition, the decriminalization of prostitution, and society’s well-intentioned yet misguided desire to let politicians legislate morality,” she says.
“These are crucial issues that face our nation today, and Galveston’s 20th century history—an era that our mainstream history would quite honestly, rather forget,” Kimber admits, “presents this microcosmic utopic society that discovered the paradoxical yet only effective way to address them—which is to live and let live.”
Kimber’s work is available wherever books are sold, but for a signed, personalized copy shipped anywhere in the world and delivered free in Galveston, visit www.BooksByKimber.com. Gift packaging available.
Find more information on Kimber, her books, and the Red Light District Tours of Galveston at www.KimberFountain.com, www.RLDTG.com, Facebook @AuthorKimberFountain & @GalvestonRedLightTours, Instagram @kimberfountain & @rldtg.
KATHLEEN MACA
Author Kathleen Maca has long been fascinated with the island’s tragic past, and she has examined it in two books she has penned, Galveston’s Broadway Cemeteries and Ghosts of Galveston.
There has been plenty of death on the 27 mile long island. From Civil War battles to cataclysmic natural disasters, the Grim Reaper has left its calling card on far too many doorsteps. The historic Hurricane of 1900 alone—a Category 4 storm that made landfall on the island on September 8, 1900—left behind devastation unlike any other the United States has known.
In Ghosts of Galveston, the author offers a collection of stories rooted in sightings of apparitions and phantasmagoric experiences noted on the island. “I specifically included only stories for which I could find some basis in fact: death certificates, police reports, etc.,” Maca says. “All of the locations in the book also still exist, so are easy for readers to see in person.”
Galveston's Broadway Cemeteries focuses on seven cemeteries that make up the Historic Cemetery District on Broadway, as well as the lives and deaths of those who were laid to rest in one of the seven graveyards. “In the book I also share some of the challenges the historic cemetery is facing, and special features that are often overlooked,” Kathleen explains.
Her latest book, History of the Hotel Galvez, will be released in February 2021. “My research uncovered stories from many different periods of the Hotel Galvez, from the men behind its construction, to its heyday during the ‘Rat Pack’ era, its many owners and remodels and finally being rescued by George Mitchell at the advice of his wife (Cynthia Mitchell),” she says.
Kathleen is now at work on a book of ghost stories for middle school readers and another special Galveston history book for adults. “I'm often asked from readers who don't live in Galveston if I worry about running out of things to write about the history of the Island, since my books and my articles in Galveston Monthly have touched on so many parts of Galveston's past,” Maca says.
“I always have to laugh, because—especially considering it's an island—there's no end to the fascinating stories to be uncovered. Whether someone is interested in Texas history, biographies, Civil War, architecture, shipping or something else, there's usually something of interest to them in Galveston's rich past.”
Find and follow Kathleen at www.KathleenMaca.com or Instagram @kathleen_maca.
BRIAN JARVIS
Local surfing guru Brian Jarvis took a personal passion and turned it into two time traveling trilogy books, Adventures of a Time Traveling Hippy Surfer, and The Continuing Adventures of a Time Traveling Hippy Surfer. The books offer a fun-filled sci-fi romp through time and space with hippie surfers as the reader’s tour guide.
“For years, I had an idea for a story about a time traveling surfer kicking around in my head,” says Jarvis, owner of C-Sick Surfing, Galveston's oldest professional surf school.
“Three years ago, I had to have a large melanoma growth removed from my arm and was forced to stay out of the water for a few weeks. To keep myself sane, I started to put my ideas about time travel into the written word. They started to take shape, and with a bit of help from my friends, the ideas came together.”
The books begin in 1974, when a surfer named Brian is out walking in the pine forest of North Carolina and stumbles across the Dome of Time and "Carl the First," the Keeper of Time. “Carl takes Brian back 65 million years to visit with dinosaurs, and Brian becomes a time traveler,” Jarvis says.
“For fun, they buzz up to Mars and leave an empty Dr. Pepper bottle where the Mars rover, Curiosity, will find it on Halloween day,” he describes. “They zip back in time and surf the famous reef breaks of Hawaii, 200 years before the islands are discovered by the Polynesians.”
Sandra, the quintessential California surfer girl—and the only other time traveler Brian and Carl have met—cannot resist hooking up with the boys and zapping around in time.
Through their travels through time, they get a preview of what is to come—a global environmental crisis that includes climate change, stratospheric ozone due to the pollution of the atmosphere, degraded water quality, land and water contamination, and biodiversity loss— which allows the trio to observe firsthand the California wildfires and the staggering eight million tons of plastic that ends up in the world's oceans every year.
They do not like what the future has in store for the world-at-large. They resolve to spread the word about the critical nature of protecting this beautiful blue marble called Earth against irreversible damage to the environment and the planet’s habitats and inhabitants. Jarvis explains, “They decide they should tell the world what they had seen up close and personal, so they wrote these books.”
The author caught his first wave in 1962 on the Hawaiian Islands and never looked back. He has surfed throughout the globe, including South Africa, the Mediterranean, and Costa Rica. His love of Mother Earth is evident, and he is among the legion of people who believe the planet needs our help.
The author said he chose to deliberately pen the sci-fi odyssey in way that will have the reader laughing aloud, yet at the same time, impart some valuable information about the destruction humans have rained down on the planet and how the species must make things right—before it is too late. “Extinction,” Jarvis said, “is real.”
Jarvis’ books can be found at www.AdventuresOfATimeTravelingHippieSurfer.com.