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Introduction

The three siblings who are the main protagonists in this story were born in
the small Caribbean island of Puerto Rico where they grew up during the
tumultuous war years. During this period, the world-at-large was struggling
with a devastating world war, and then a brutal war in Korea. Puerto Rico,
itself, was mired in widespread and pervasive poverty that had earned that
island the dubious distinction of being, “The Poorhouse of the Caribbean”.
Despite all of this, the siblings lived an almost idyllic life free of the
pressures and temptations that concern parents and children of today.

Raised within the protective cocoon of a college campus, in a quiet town,
tucked away in a remote corner of the island, the children were free, even at a
very early age, to roam the hills and forests of the campus-- to play, to
explore and to exercise their creative imaginations, individually and in
concert with dozens of other on-campus children. Although limited by the
lack of entertainment technology that is so pervasive today, the children
more than compensated by the tremendous variety of natural resources at
their veritable beck-and-call: mountains, forests, streams, waterfalls, lush
river valleys, beaches and mangrove and coral islets. Their island home was
blessed by being located in the tropics where the weather was always warm
yet caressed with an almost perpetual breeze from the sea. The yearly
temperature variance was no more than ten degrees.

Our protagonists were thoroughly Puertorican, although they always knew
that they were “different”, in a positive way, by virtue of having a father who
was not only North American but also a college professor. Their father had
come to Puerto Rico to help a missionary to start a school that eventually
grew into a college. He married a local beauty, a college student, that worked
at the poultry farm he operated. The children learned to speak their native
tongue, Spanish, from their mother and others in her family. Yet, they also
learned to speak English from their father and other North American adults
and children on the college campus. Just before the two eldest were ready for
junior high and the youngest had just begun school, the children moved to
the Midwest where they were immersed in the rural-American culture of the
1950s.
They concluded their formative years by attending a one-room school, then
high school, while living on a forty-acre farm in an environment that was

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