Three Star Fix

By Joseph Jablonski

Driven from his rural home for insulting the parish priest, Midshipman Jake Thomas boards a freighter in New Orleans, entering the exotic world of foreign ports and life on the high seas. Jake plunges... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0972234926
• ISBN13: 9780972234924
• Release Date: October 2002
• Publisher: Gardenia Press
• Length: 342 Pages
• Weight: 1.12 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 5.9" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

Clear, accomplished, and honest

Mr. Jablonski's first novel is a fine piece of work: a classic Bildungsroman of the sea, in which 19-year-old Jake Thomas makes his first sea voyage in the merchant marine aboard the freighter "Gulf Trader." A virginal midshipman who has run out on his drunken father and given the finger to his Catholic upbringing in Nebraska, Jake learns about life, women, love, and the sea on his maiden voyage from New Orleans to Valparaiso, Chile and back in about five weeks of the summer of 1967.Jablonski tells a solid, honest tale, cutting few corners and making fewer narrative missteps. His hero visits a number of brothels, with more and less satisfying results; falls in love with an unearthly beauty in Chile; witnesses at least one killing; trip-sits for a shipmate, then does a tab of acid himself; reads _Crime and Punishment_ and ponders his similarities and differences with Raskolnikov; identifies the soul buddies on board, as well as the baddies to stay clear of; and tries to learn the tricky job of making a "three star fix," in which the sea navigator pinpoints his ship's exact location by sighting familiar stars along the celestial sphere.Although there are many striking incidents and an occasional exquisite passage throughout this sexually frank but not explicit book, for my money the best chapter occurs in the middle of the story, when Jake visits an infamous whorehouse in Callao known as the Trockadero. Sharp details mingle with hallucinatory descriptions of events and emotions; it would have made a lovely short story by itself.Jablonski's publisher, Gardenia Press of Milwaukee, Wisconsin, has done a mixed job by its author. There are a fair number of typoes, although most of them are not of the leap-off-the-page-at-you variety. His editors seem to have had particular difficulty keeping an apostrophe out of the possessive "its," and they've invariably allowed their word processing software to substitute an open quotation mark for an initial apostrophe (as in " 'Cuz" and "How 'bout you?"). Some of the more amusing ones included egg "yoke," "Universite de Columbia," and "a small steep trail -- not much more than a lama path. . . ." But the cover art is marvelous, and the book is well produced for a paperback.Not being an experienced seaman (I crossed the Atlantic to Tangiers on a Yugoslav freighter once, but as a 10-year-old tourist passenger), I can't vouch for the accuracy of the descriptions of the crafts and trade, but I wouldn't doubt they are as on target as the rest of the book seems to be.An admirable effort. I hope Mr. Jablonski keeps writing.

An Excellent -- Intellectual -- Maritime Adventure

Mr. Jablonski's focal character, Jake Thomas -- a cadet on his first voyage out to sea -- encounters the realities of navel life. With a poet's lust for life, Jake slips in and out third world ports and coastal -- whorehouses, like a young man on a do-or-die mission to lose his virginity. He finds love, lots of love, as he discovers the feminine role as a necessary adjunct to professional seamanship.This work will surely become known as a fine maritime maturation tale, par excellence. I loved the word portraits Joe Jablonski painted of the good guys and bad guys. Moral codes and the basic philosophical ought are openly questioned throughout this lusty, masterful novel. From this day forward, when I hear the words "Must Read" I will immediately think, "Three Star Fix." It most certainly is -- a "Must Read."