FIVE MILES DEEP

Marina Victoria is my sister's name, and it was also her mother's name. I never met her mother. She died the same year my father was killed in 1941. Her father married my mother in 1943, and Marina became my sister, and eighty years later, she still is. In 1943, she convinced me she had magical powers. Now that we are both eighty-six years old and still going strong, although at a slower pace, I still believe she has magical powers and made her the star of the books I have written.

The following is a summary of the first three books that are enclosed in the trilogy of Marina Victoria, where the presidential mermaid uses her inherited gifts of underwater superpowers to come to the aid of the citizens of Puerto Rico, Brazil, and Alaska. A fourth book is planned for release later in 2024 that will take place in Southwest Florida.

The first adventure begins in a mountainous valley located on the western edge of Aquarius ten thousand years before the ice age melts and the waters that become the Atlantic Ocean flood the Puerto Rico Trench with five miles of water over the domed city that Marina's ancestors build and live in undiscovered until the Trieste submersible finds them in 1960. The original story is called Five Miles Deep. One of the sailors aboard the submersible falls in love with a beautiful lady who lives in the domed city and brings her back to the United States. The story is rich in naval technology, ancient historical facts, and underwater experiences stirred but not shaken by an invasion, politics, and science fiction.

The second story takes place in Brazil, where Marina is deployed as an ambassador to help with an unusual number of shark attacks on the eastern coast of Brazil that threatens tourism and the upcoming Olympic games that are coming to Brazil that year. Marina's influence over marine life and political greed, pollution, and corruption open up a large can of worms in how business seems to be done in South America's largest country.

Brazilian politics and lifestyle are explored in detail in Tiger Shark Terror from the perspective of the author's wife. Maria is Brazilian, and they have a home in Recife, a large city on the east coast.

There are real problems surrounding a large shipping port south of Recife and the environmental destruction of the food chain and the subsequent frequency of shark attacks. The author describes and analyzes how many bull sharks travel and live for months, even years, in the fresh waters of the Amazon River.

Totem is the third novel in the Marina Victoria Series. Marina has retired and has moved to Southeast Alaska, where her husband, Porter, has taken a job with the Gateway Borough school system. Southeast Alaska has an interesting mixture of ethnic Native Americans and other cultures in the largest but least-populated state in the United States. Marina finds that not only does she have the ability to communicate with sea life but that she also has a limited rapport with Alaskan animals that are common there as well.

To make things interesting, Marina learns she has a niece with some unusual characteristics too. Joni is an orphaned child whose mother mysteriously disappears from her Native American village where they live and where her mother's image is carved into a totem pole, indicating she may also have great power. She is Marina's long-lost twin sister.

Marina solves the mystery of the Alaska Permanent Fund that some corrupt funeral directors are using to scam the state out of a financial legacy unique only to Alaskans.

The awesome beauty and surprisingly mild climate of Southeast Alaska is described in detail, mixing with the history and rich culture woven into this reverse murder mystery.