Living on an Arc

Brent Wilson fled the rat race of the Developed World and moved to Nevis, one of the Caribbean's tiniest and least-developed islands. He took just a few, simple possessions: a suitcase filled with underwear, a copy of Robinson Crusoe, and some string. Brent discovered that Caribbean life is not all sun, rum and sand. His arrival coincided with Hurricane Hugo, and he encountered tarantulas in his toilet and scorpions in his bed. He could barely understand the islanders, and during his first years on Nevis grew close to a nineteen-year-old woman dead over three hundred years. But Brent stuck it out while watching other hopefuls come and go, beaten by the realities of tropical life. Eventually he even managed to find that most unlikely of things-a real, live woman prepared to put up with him. This is an account of Brent's years on Nevis, and how he finally had to choose between Jacqui, the woman he had found, and Nevis, the island he had come to love.