Author Description

Danny Melville was content with his laid-back life in Jamaica. He spent his days playing polo with friends and other locals at his famed Chukka Cove, sipping on rum or maybe a Red Stripe, and living every day to the fullest. He knew how fortunate he was to have this life of privilege, which came from old family money: a legacy from his American great-grandfather Thomas Briggs, who over a hundred years ago perfected and mass-produced the stapling machine and made his Boston Wire Stitcher Company, which came to be known as Bostitch, a household name worldwide. Beyond that, though, Danny knew little about Briggs, Briggs's daughter Berenice (Danny s grandmother), or any other relatives outside his own immediate family, for that matter. And in all honesty, he really wasn't all that curious about it until the day a stranger walked onto his polo grounds looking for him. That's when a seed was sown. The man knew a lot about Danny's family history and wanted to tell him all about it. He especially wanted to tell Danny about the secret life of the man Berenice had married: Danny s grandfather, Harold Melville. What the stranger revealed was so shocking that Danny would eventually be drawn into a tangled family web that he became determined to unravel. Lost Stitches is a remarkable book that is part family memoir full of family intrigue and heartbreak, part American history, part romance, and part love-letter to Jamaica. Told in a heartfelt yet humble, candid and relatable way, Danny recounts the amazing legacy of great-grandfather Thomas Briggs and how it was that his heiress daughter, a debutante of Boston society, came to marry Danny's grandfather Harold Melville and move with him to Jamaica to raise a family. Then there are the scandalous stories told of The Major, grandfather Harold Melville, and his seemingly many progenies within and outside his marriage; the tragic stories of the Bostitch sisters Helen and Berenice; of kissing cousins Harold and Josephine, outs