Wilson Roberts – författare

Born in Philadelphia''s Walnut Street Theater in 1849, George Berrell died in 1933, after a life he often described as one of growing up with the country. His travels of self-discovery and those of his life on the stage are illustrative of a nation moving from travel on foot and horseback to that of automobiles and Boeing''s first major airliner, the 247. Berrell saw it all and performed on stages from early Deadwood to St. Louis and Chicago and all points in between. Torn between his affection for John Wilkes Booth and the actress Catherine Terrell, pursued by Miranda Ives, the daughter of a primitive preacher, one of Quantrill''s Raiders who proclaimed that he was destined for her, Berrell''s personal and theatrical life spanned the continent, ending in the motion pictures where in 1917 he appeared in John Ford''s first full-length western, "Straight Shooting." Based on Berrell''s memoir, ''Shadows and Acts'' is the story of a large chunk of American history as seen through one man''s eyes.

It is the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars. ''February Heat,'' set on St. Ursula, a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands, is the first novel in a trilogy featuring Frank James, poet and private detective. In this tale, Frank finds his calm and secure life on St. Ursula in jeopardy when he receives a phone call from Liz Ford, a woman he briefly met when returning home on the ferry from St. Thomas. Awakened by her 2:36 am call telling him someone had just tried to kill her and asking for his help, Frank and his friend, Chance agree to help her. After a shoot-out on a beach, they find they must accompany her to Philadelphia where they find her physician husband has been murdered. Before they can safely return to St. Ursula Frank and Chance break into the offices of a mysterious New Hampshire college with connections to Liz''s husband''s medical practice and the drug ring with which the doctors are involved. Frank''s situation is complicated by his troubled relationships with Howard Penn, the island''s Chief Inspector of Police, who despises expatriate Americans, and L. Arthur Parker, St. Ursula''s Prime Minster, who will do anything, and use anyone in any way he can, to assure his continuance in office.

It is the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars. ''Caribbean Ice,'' set on St. Ursula, a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands, is the second novel in a trilogy featuring Frank James, poet and private detective. Until being indicted, Bailey Vandeventer ran the Back Bay Escort Service providing sexual services to a high end clientele that included leading politicians, business men and opinion makers. When the Boston Globe ran an article claiming that Bailey had notebooks detailing her clients'' identities and sexual preferences she takes refuge on St. Ursula, staying with her college roommate, Vivian Parker, the wife of St. Ursula''s Prime Minister, L. Arthur Parker. Parker tells Frank that if he wishes to remain on St. Ursula he will protect Bailey from the people who are seeking her notebooks and wish to silence her. When Bailey is kidnapped, Frank, Chance and their friend, Vinnie Ledford, a retired SEAL, set out to rescue her.

Set in the early 1980s, a time when air travel was uncomplicated, when people still smoked in offices, restaurants and bars, ''October Fury'' is the final novel in the St. Ursula trilogy, featuring Frank James, poet and private detective. St. Ursula is a British Caribbean island very near to the American and British Virgin Islands. Herbie Lewis, a local bar musician asks Frank to investigate the death of his brother, Jeff. While it was ruled to be an accidental drowning, Herbie is convinced that Jeff was murdered. As a hurricane approaches St. Ursula and the Virgin Islands, Frank and his friend Chance are drawn into a confrontation with unscrupulous marketers, owners of a pyramid scheme that purports to be founded upon religious principles. The narrative, alternately tense and humorous, follows Frank and Chance as the storm builds and hits St. Ursula, the fury of the storm mirroring the fury of events as they discover the truth of Jeff''s death and the crimes and corruption surrounding it.

As Anna Delinny, a central character in ''A Place in Paradise'' says, "There are places of power on the earth. Some of great import to the entire world, others of local interest. Talk to someone who has been to Delphi. Ask what kinds of feelings the place engenders. Or Stonehenge. In such places the sense of power is so strong people regard it as evidence of the holy. In other places, the reaction might lead to less pretentious classifications. Perhaps some would call them haunted, or magic." Langeberg, the dark and terrifying ruins of a St. John plantation is such a place, harboring a malevolent power that Anna and her brother Martin have inherited from their grandfather the responsibility for keeping in balance with the rest of the lovely Caribbean island. When the ruins are developed into a luxury resort Anna is forced to confront the balances of her own life. Torn between her academic life in California and dreams of a Nobel in economics and Martin''s dedication to the traditional patterns of belief with which they were both raised, she must decide whether evil is real and must be confronted or if it is a nothing more than a word for human over-reaction to unfathomable events. ''A Place in Paradise'' is a tale of the present interspersed with episodes from the past, beginning with the brutal French attack led by Henri Longueville on the enslaved Africans of St. John, who 1733 staged one of the first rebellions against slave owners in North American, to the coming of the human flesh eating Caribs, and ending with the arrival on the island of the Taino, who first settled it. All have reason to fear the place that will become Langeberg, an area in which inexplicable evil resides. ''A Place in Paradise'' is filled with richly drawn characters, from Anna and Martin to Hank Longe, who first built Langeberg into the Windmill Inn, to his successors Ed and Claudia Langhorne, and Olga Cohen, the Realtor who masterminds the development of Langeberg. It is a story that will keep its readers awake as they listen to the sounds of wild donkeys crying in the night.

In the early spring of 1944, three nine year old boys bicycle to Double Woods, a patch of second and third growth woodland just beyond the borough limits of Newtown, Pennsylvania. While playing there, they find the body of a young woman, Penny Ringle, buried under a mattress in a make shift dump. The town’s new police chief, Stan Burns, back from the war after being wounded in Italy, investigates the murder. He is faced with a small list of suspects and the fact that Penny, a war time worker in the Philadelphia Naval Yard, was also involved in the management of a prostitution ring in the city. Tom Watson, the head of the Newtown’s Borough Council, and acounty commissioner, who pushed Stan’s appointment as chief through the Council, pressures him and the Bucks County District Attorney to make a quick arrest, based on disturbing circumstantial evidence. At the subsequent trial the suspect is convicted and sentenced to be executed by electrocution.In 1987, forty three years after the trial and execution, Stan Burns is ill and living in a nursing home. He tells Will Davis, the police chief he mentored, and who succeeded him, that he was never comfortable with the conviction and has come to believe the individual executed to be innocent. Will, who was one three boys who found Penny’s body, starts a second investigation into her murder. With no more evidence to go on than Stan Burns had during the first investigation, Will is faced with uncertainty. Was Stan right? Did the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania execute an innocent person? Is there any way to discover the two truths he is charged with seeking: the possible innocence of the person convicted and executed for Penny’s murder and, if so, the identity and motive of the true killer?In the course of his investigation, Will Razor has to follow Stan Burns’ already trod path. The suspects of forty three years before are again investigated. Will is faced with acknowledging the difficulty of truly knowing anything, including whether or not his former wife murdered their unwanted and sickly child. A mystery in the true sense, ''Double Woods'' is an exciting story of a murder and its investigations as well as a vivid recreation of times past in Newtown, a small Bucks County farming community near Philadelphia, just as the town and county’s semi rural past is disappearing, replaced by the cities and suburbs that now dominate the coasts of the central and northeast United States.

It Happened on St. John is a love letter to one of the world’s loveliest and most unique communities in one of the world’s loveliest and most unique places. Known locally as Love City, St. John is the smallest and most undeveloped of the three main islands of the United States Virgin Islands. The events in Wilson Roberts’ most recent novel take place months before Hurricanes Irma and Maria ripped through the Caribbean with fearsome winds and tides, tearing communities to pieces and leaving shattered homes and lives in its wake.It Happened on St. John is a tale of a community united to fight the schemes of con-artists threatening to develop an unsustainable marina in the Coral Bay section of the island. It is a tale of a community where people put aside small differences to help one another in the face of adversities. It is a tale of a community of music and music makers, artists, artisans and tradespeople, business people, of people from all walks of life.It Happened on St. John is a tale for everyone who knows life on a tropical island can approximate perfection. It is a tale for everyone who has wondered what they might find, should they reinvent themselves on a 20-square mile Caribbean land mass. It is a tale for everyone who would like to believe that most people have in their hearts sparks of generosity ready to burst into flame. It is a tale for everyone who wonders if some mysteries can ever be solved.It Happened on St. John is a tale for everyone who loves St. John, for everyone who knows someone who loves St. John, for everyone who understands what it is to love a place, any place, for everyone who understands what it is to love their community. It is a tale for everyone who understands that a beloved community cannot be allowed to perish, whether due to greed and ignorance, or due to wind, fire and rain.It Happened on St. John is the second novel in Wilson Roberts’ St. John trilogy. It is a tale of the island before Hurricanes Irma and Maria. It tells of the calm before those terrible storms, a time when people did not realize they lived in that calm, a time before the winds that rose to form Irma started with a small eddy of dust in the Sahara that blew into a boy’s face and filled his eyes.It Happened on St. John is a tale filled with characters and scenes and events that readers will not easily forget.