A Lillooet woman has penned a novel about her harrowing experience on a Caribbean Island after Hurricane Hugo in 1989. Joan Giannone dreamed of hot evenings by the pool after years of “grey, cold and slush” in Toronto. Instead, she battled serious corruption and crime, and became utterly trapped inside a dream turned nightmare.
Giannone’s protagonist Jackie faces her own real-life challenges on a fictional island called San Glorio in Money Moth Death Moth. Her tale is one of hope in the face of adversity.
“I had been in a series of executive positions which were really high-stress in Toronto,” says Giannone. “In the winter, it’s horrendous. It’s just full of grey, cold and slush.”
The businesswoman got caught up in the craze of manifesting the life you want.
“I really took it hook, line and sinker. I thought I could be, do and have anything I wanted,” says Giannone. “In the middle of winter, the dream was always the Caribbean. I had run my own company for a while, so I felt I could do this.”
She agreed with her partner to take a three-month sabbatical from their busy lives in 1989.
“We investigated five different islands in the Caribbean,” says Giannone. “There was no internet, so there was no way to do research.”
They settled on an island in the East Caribbean the author is still terrified to name for fear of repercussion, fictionalized in her book as San Gloria, and started a company that specialized in making tiling for pool decks and patios.
Shortly after, a Category 5 hurricane decimated their dream lives.
“It was only two weeks after we moved there that Hurricane Hugo hit,” says Giannone. “It destroyed the house completely. Ten thousand houses on the island were flattened. We had boarded up our windows. We did everything we could to prepare. We ended up in this tiny little closet hiding. During most of the night, we just thought we were going to die.”
The hurricane completely destroyed their new home. Thankfully, the pair survived the catastrophic event and started to face the harsh financial implications.
The Canadian couple had already noticed a great deal of corruption before Hurricane Hugo.
“We went to meet this Minister of Trade. When we went to see them a second time, he had a sign above his door saying he was Acting Minister for Trade and Immigration,” says Giannone. “You could not run a business or come or go off the island without his say so. Not only that, [he took] us to a far inferior warehouse that day when we visited him.”
The government official asked the pair “in no uncertain terms” for a substantial bribe. They quickly realized how high the stakes on this island were.
“He let us know that the Prime Minister of that country agreed that we should pay that huge bribe,” says Giannone. “In one drawer he had our papers. He opened that one to let us see. Then he opened the drawer on the right that had a gun in it. He looked at us and asked what it was going to be. My partner spoke up and said that this was not how we do business in Canada. The minister replied that we weren’t in Canada anymore.”
Giannone’s purse was also stolen from their condo. The police warned them not to pursue criminal justice.
“We were robbed and the police force knew who had stolen my purse,” she says. “They said they could pursue it and put the guy in jail. However, they stressed that a circuit court judge would quickly release him. They said it was our word against his, and if we pushed this, we would make a lot of enemies. We were absolutely trapped. You’re trapped by the money. We were young and thought we were just going to fight through. The trap just got worse.”
Giannone’s younger partner found a way to flee the island, leaving her to fend for herself. “My partner abandoned me on the island. He went back to Toronto,” she says. “He got away by saying he was on a buying trip and would return. They knew if I left, that was it.”
Getting out of the sticky situation was easier said than done. The young woman’s dream slipped into a nightmare from which she couldn’t wake.
“There was no Canadian Embassy,” she says. “It became overwhelming. You’re on your own. You were just one more voice asking for help. I was traumatized by what we had been through.”
In the novel, Giannone’s character’s escape is dramatized. In real life, it took several years to escape from the island.
“I was broke,” she says. “People kept phoning me demanding money, including this minister who wanted his bribe. I was baking bread and selling it to my friend’s restaurants to make sandwiches. That paid enough for rice and beans. A friend of mine in Toronto used her credit card and name to get me an airline ticket from the next island back to Toronto.”
A trade fair on the next island gave Giannone a believable reason for leaving.
“I told them I was going to that with brochures,” she says. “They bought that, and I got away.”
The well-travelled lady still has nightmares about returning to the island and being spotted by the wrong person. She hopes to warn people the grass is not always greener on the other side.
“What you don’t know can hurt you,” she says.
Money Moth Death Moth is available for purchase on Amazon.
