Jay S. Sherman

Jay S. Sherman was born in New York but spent some of his childhood on the Gulf coast of Florida and near an army post outside of Little Rock. He’s been a hotel waiter, a literacy teacher, a silkscreen dryer, a mailroom clerk, a newsreel cameraman, a hawker of libretti at an opera house, a commercial production assistant and a documentarian. A theater major at Cornell, he earned a degree in motion picture production at the NYU film school and was a working film editor for 25 years.

This a work of fiction.

But, as it is for a many writers, the source of this fiction, its seeds, are the little truths of his or her past life. Sometimes the half-lies: places he’s been, people he’s known, talk he’s heard, emotions he’s felt.

So, certain real places and people are referenced here: there is an El train running in the Bronx. There certainly is an Ithaca, a San Francisco and Seattle, Omaha Beachhead and White Sands. There was a Guevara and a Lubitsch. But the reader will probably not find the Caribbean island of San Estéban on any map. Its residents and all who populate these stories are imagined. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

"Twenty-four hours later, Sean Flanagan beached a rowboat on San Estéban. With him were provisions enough for three months, a Smith and Wesson revolver, a brass harmonica, some plug chewing tobacco, two decks of playing cards, a nice wood chess set given him at ten by his grandfather, and a worthy opponent, Herschel Gruenfeld, who had urged the skipper to consider the spiritual needs of the islanders.

Since the skipper had once experienced a mass served for his crew by Chaplain Gruenfeld, an event he wanted never to see repeated, he readily agreed

and instantly signed orders separating the rabbi from his ship.

“Give those heathens hell, Padre,” the skipper had shouted down to Gruenfeld as Flanagan pushed off from the ship’s side and dipped his oars into the azure water."

- Excerpt from "Estéban's Dance, a Novella and Five Tales"