Gerald was only 19 when he entered the Peace Corps after two years as a literature student at Albion College. After graduation there he returned to the Marshall Islands with a love for literature and an interest in transcribing the stories he had heard in previous years. He taught for a year and worked as a commercial fisherman for two, honing his knowledge of the language and culture. Then he went for an uninterrupted four year stay on remote Rongelap Atoll to study with the renown traditional navigators and storytellers there. In 1979 he attended a one-year apprentice program at the Bishop Museum in Honolulu to prepare as Director of the Alele Museum and National Archive of the Marshall Islands. He held that position for ten years culminating in a two-year collaboration with the Field Museum of Natural History on their permeant “Traveling the Pacific” exhibit that features a donated traditional outrigger canoe.
In 1999 Gerald graduated from the University of Illinois with master’s degrees in business administration and accounting. He currently heads a thriving CPA tax practice in Palos Hill, IL. He has completed the Chicago - Mackinac Island race five times and been a member of the Columbia Yacht Club since 2005.
Book(s)
Books
Man Shark
There is a single story amid the extensive oral literature of the Marshall Islanders that uncharacteristically has no ending.
The Forbidden Man
The prequel to Man Shark, this is the story of Lainjin's outrigger search for his mother, who was lost at sea in a typhoon the moon after his birth. The Pacific is an enormous expanse; how is he to find her amid all the possibilities? How does he even know if she survived?
The Legend Is Born
This faraway, pre-contact story begins with Helkena, a young, still untattooed girl enduring a typhoon crashing over the only island she has ever known. Her home is Wōtto, one of the dry, windswept atolls of the northern Marshall Islands.
The Fall of the Saudeleurs
The Legends of Lainjin series concludes in the pre-contact city of Nahn Madol. The aging hero Lainjin sails there from his home on Lae Atoll, pursuing his daughter and Ijokelekel, a young man with bold plans to lead a revolt in Pohnpei.