Author | Journalist | Librarian | Prison Reform Activist
CRIME BITES: Police dogs tales of Trinidad and Tobago
Crime Bites is the newest book by Debbie Jacob.
Nevile and the Lost Bridge
In the year 2222, Nevile and his friends Nina and A.T. are elite bridge builders in the province of Aribbea, where children go to work, adults go to school, and everyone is ruled by a tyrannical king. No-one remembers what life was like before the calamitous event which brought the king to power, and enabled him to lock up all secrets and memory in his own library. Aribbeans now have no memory, and no understanding of the world outside the bridges on which they live. When Nevile, Nina and A.T. find themselves plunging from a bridge to the land and sea below, they have no idea what will befall them. Sometimes together, sometimes apart, each must make his or her way through the tests and challenges which await them, to find their true place and to begin to recover their history. Accompanied by a varied cast of companions, they encounter Pierre the Bacoo, Papa Bois, the rasta Hunn Dread, Hanuman the monkey and the last dog in Arribea. This motley crew succeeds in posing the first real challenge to his rule which the king has ever faced.
What does friendship and loyalty mean? How do we know when we are safe, and what makes us so? Who can we trust?
Making waves
A Guyanese slave from Barbados turns a Salem courtroom into a stage, spins stories of witches riding on sticks and ends up having 13 women condemned to death. A Scottish sailor wanted for murder in Tobago flees the West Indies to become the “father” of the US navy, and an orphan from Nevis, who is raised in St. Kitts and the Virgin Islands, sets up a banking system that saves the newly independent US from financial disaster.
Meet some of the most influential West Indians in US History: the Haitian who settles in in onion patch and founds a major Midwestern city; the pirate working out of Haiti who becomes legendary for defending New Orleans; a broken- hearted merchant mogul from the Danish West Indies who founds a major city in the western US and the West Indians from Trinidad, Martinique, Jamaica and Cat Island who took Hollywood and the sports world by storm.
From the one-legged man who hobbled off a Dutch West Indies ship to become the last Governor of New Amsterdam (before it became New York in 1646) to the towering, lithe Trinidadian who ruled Broadway and became a voodoo villain in a 1973 James Bond movie, the West Indies and West Indians have shaped colonial America, the American Revolution, the Civil War and the Civil Rights movement – and even the rap revolution with its Jamaican roots.
wishing for wings
They were outcasts, the forgotten boys of Trinidad and Tobago imprisoned for violent crimes including armed robbery and murder. They had nothing left but a wish for a better life, the feeling that they would need an education to achieve their goals, and a desperate desire to find an English teacher. In 2010 Debbie Jacob entered the gates of the Youth Training Centre (YTC), the remand centre for boys in the Caribbean island of Trinidad - it would be a move that would change her life and the lives of her young charges forever.
Based on a true story, Wishing for Wings recounts Debbie's challenging journey of preparing seven young men for the Caribbean Examinations Council (CXC) English Language exam. Heartbreaking but also encouraging, Debbie's story and those of her students, offer an unprecedented look into the lives of troubled teens and boys in prison. The realities of the education and justice systems are brought into sharp focus as are issues such as teaching (formal) English in a Creole speaking environment.
legend of the st Ann's flood
No one ever knew the cause of the deadly flood that hit St Ann's, Trinidad in 1993 - no one, that is, until a frightened boy named Jabari came stumbling out of the St Ann's hills with a legend given to him by Papa Bois, the king of the forest. Rescued from the clutches of Mama Dlo, the anaconda who is queen of the rivers, Jabari was given the task of telling people the real story of the flood.
Speaking of promises
A teenager confronts her grandmother when she suspects the old woman is a soucouyant; a gentle giant, working as a bodyguard, becomes the target of a police investigation; a man walking by KFC in Port of Spain ends up in a kangaroo court in Tamarind Square and a bored, young woman plays a dangerous game of love. Welcome to the island of Trinidad, no longer defined by places like V.S. Naipaul's Miguel Street, but still filled with memorable characters who live, love and struggle with relationships in ways that are uniquely Trinidadian. It's a place where everyone is speaking of promises.