A Handful of Seawater

Life & Its Meaning

On the Caribbean island of Grenada, Morgan is fending for himself, an orphan, the poorest of the poor in a poverty-stricken country. After living on the streets for a few years following the death of his mother, he meets Alden, a grizzled, old fisherman with a zen-master presence who takes him on as an apprentice.

As Morgan searches for someone to replace the affection lost when his mother died, he slowly learns the meaning of life through a series of adventures and misadventures. At every reversal of fortune, Alden helps him see the bigger picture. He shows Morgan, and the reader, the joy to be found in simple things—even a handful of seawater.

While the story is fictional, most events are based on the people the author met while teaching math and science at a secondary school following the 1983 intervention in which the US military drove out the former communist government. This was the first of Ron Frazer seven novels.