MEYER, Louis A(lbert), Jr. 1942-

(L. A. Meyer)

PERSONAL: Born August 22, 1942, in Johnstown, PA; son of Louis, Sr. (an army officer) and Martha (a homemaker; maiden name, Keytack) Meyer; married Annetje Lawrence (a retailer), May 28, 1966; children: Matthew, Nathaniel. Education: University of Florida, B.A. (English literature), 1964; graduate study in painting, Columbia University, 1970; Boston University, M.F.A. (painting), 1973. Politics: Independent.

ADDRESSES: Home and office—P.O. Box 9, Corea, ME 04624. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Painter and author. Rockland High School, Rockland, MA, art teacher, 1974-81; cofounder of Sweetback Graphics (textile design and imprinting firm), 1981; cofounder of Clair de Loon Gallery (art gallery), Bar Harbor, ME, 1984—, and co-owner, Blue Loon Studio Gallery, Birch Harbor, ME. Military service: U.S. Navy, 1964-68; became lieutenant.

WRITINGS:

The Gypsy Bears, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1971.

The Clean Air and Peaceful Contentment Dirigible Airline, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1972.

(As L. A. Meyer) Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy (young-adult novel), Harcourt (San Diego, CA), 2002.

WORK IN PROGRESS: A sequel to Bloody Jack.

SIDELIGHTS: Louis A. Meyer, Jr. published two children's picture books while attending art school in Boston in the early 1970s before writing his 2002 adventure novel Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy. His first work, Gypsy Bears, follows a family of human-like bears who must leave their home in Romania because of a famine in their homeland. But King Zoltan and Maria, the mama and papa bear, along with their two cubs, find it difficult to make a living by entertaining people with their music as everyone seems to be afraid of them wherever they go. After becoming incarcerated in a zoo, they quickly escape and eventually make their way to Yellowstone Park, where they are allowed to continue their happy, gypsy ways without fear. Although Muriel Kolb, who reviewed Gypsy Bears for Library Journal, complained that Meyer pushes his anthropomorphic story too far, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly called this "a refreshing and delightful fantasy." Meyer's second picture book, The Clean Air and Peaceful Contentment Dirigible Airline, in which an eccentric inventor builds a flying machine that eventually replaces the airplane and the family car, garnered praise for its "bold and brassy" illustrations from Library Journal reviewer Carol Chatfield.

Thirty years later, Meyer published an altogether different sort of book for young people, a historical adventure for young adults. In Bloody Jack, Meyer creates an exciting, fast-paced plot, a resourceful heroine, and an intriguing setting, claimed reviewers, when orphaned twelve-year-old Mary decides to disguise herself as a boy and sign onto a British warship in late eighteenth-century London. Mary must learn the arduous job of a ship's boy, and the opportunities for her to show her mettle are frequent in the face of predatory shipmates, a clash with pirates, and a shipwreck. Throughout, she must maintain her disguise as "Jacky" despite the ongoing changes of puberty and her growing feelings for another of the ship's young sailors.

"The action in Jacky's tale will entertain readers with a taste for adventure," contended Carolyn Phelan in Booklist, who praised Meyer's effective use of period detail and the strength of Jacky's narrative voice. While not a "rousing, swashbuckling tale of pirates and adventures on the high seas," according to Kit Vaughan in School Library Journal, Bloody Jack is "a good story" with a strong, likeable heroine, this critic concluded. Other reviewers were even more enthusiastic in their praise, including a critic for Publishers Weekly, who applauded Meyer's "Dickensian flair" in depicting the hardships of an orphaned child living on the streets of London, and extolled "the spirited heroine's wholly engaging voice." Likewise, for a critic in Kirkus Reviews, Meyer "has penned a rousing old-time girl's adventure story, with an outsized heroine who is equal parts gutsy and vulnerable." Bloody Jack is "a first-rate read," this reviewer concluded.

"I was born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, in 1942, and spent the next thirteen years as an Army brat, living in Germany and up and down the East Coast of the United States," Meyer told CA. "I liked being an Army kid, despite all the constant moving—my mother informs me we moved twenty-six times, and I know I went to twelve different schools before I go out of high school. There was always a lot of great boy stuff to do on Army bases and there was a real camaraderie among the kids—you made friends fast and you saw them go just as quick.

"After my father retired, I went to high school in Conemaugh, Pennsylvania, and Fort Myers, Florida, and college at the University of Florida in Gainesville. While at college, I met my future wife, Annetje Lawrence. Upon graduation with a degree in English literature, I bid the aforementioned Ms. Lawrence goodbye forever and put in a summer as a floor sweeper in Chicago and then hitchhiked around Mexico and the southern United States. Being imminently draftable during the Vietnam-war era and not wanting to have my throat cut in some hot and buginfested foxhole, I joined the Navy and four months later, I was a spanking new officer in the U.S. Navy, assigned to the Mediterranean Fleet. The closest I got to combat was in various bars in Italy, France, Spain, and Malta. During this time, I also renewed my acquaintance with the inestimable Ms. Annetje Lawrence, and in 1966, during one of my few times in port, we were married.

"After my release from the service, we did our year in New York City, where I worked as a social worker and took graduate art courses at Columbia University. We then relocated to Scituate, Massachusetts, and I enrolled in Boston University's Master of Fine Arts program, receiving my M.F.A. in painting in '73. While at Boston University, I published two children's picture books with Little, Brown, and Company. I taught high school art for seven years at Rockland High School in Rockland, Massachusetts, and we had two sons, Matthew and Nathaniel, who are both now painters and teachers. We left teaching in 1981 to set up a silk screen printing and design shop in Fort Myers Beach, Florida, and soon had retail shops both there and in Bar Harbor, Maine. (We had purchased land on the downeast coast of Maine in 1971 and had built a house, and we have summered there ever since.)

"Several years ago, we closed up the Florida operation and moved to Maine full time, and we now have the Clair de Loon Gallery in Bar Harbor and the Blue Loon Studio Gallery in Birch Harbor, Maine. We live in the small fishing village of Corea.

"About the birth of Jacky Faber, protagonist of Bloody Jack: My wife and I have a small art gallery in Bar Harbor, Maine, wherein we sell matted and framed prints of my art work. We sell quite a few of these prints, and they all have to be matted and framed, and I'm the one that gets to do it. While the work is gratifying—people are buying my artwork after all—it is repetitive and the mind is free to wander. So, one day in the summer of 2000, I'm framing away in my workshop and listening to British and Celtic folk music on our local community radio station, when the host of the program plays a long string of early nineteenth-century songs that feature young girls dressing up as boys and following their boyfriends out to sea, the most well known of these being 'Jackaroe' and 'Canadi-i-o.' These generally end up with the girl being found out quickly and happily marrying either the boy or the captain. It occurred to me, however, to wonder what it would be like if the girl, instead of seeking to be with her lover, connives to get on board a British warship in order to just eat regularly and have a place to stay, her being a starving orphan on the streets of late 1700s London. What would she have to do to pull off this deception for a long period of time? How would she handle the 'necessary' things? What if she goes through the changes of adolescence while on board in the company of 408 rather rough men and boys, and her not having much of a clue as to what is happening to her? What if this ship goes into combat and she has to do her dangerous duty? And, finally, what if she falls in love with one of the boys and can never tell him of her female nature?

"I started making notes and seven months later Bloody Jack was done."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Booklist, November 15, 2002, Carolyn Phelan, review of Bloody Jack: Being an Account of the Curious Adventures of Mary "Jacky" Faber, Ship's Boy, p. 595.

Kirkus Reviews, March 15, 1972, review of The Clean Air and Peaceful Contentment Dirigible, p. 322; August 1, 2002, review of Bloody Jack, p. 1137.

Library Journal, May 15, 1971, Muriel Kolb, review of The Gypsy Bears, p. 1806; February 15, 1973, Carol Chatfield, review of The Clean Air and Peaceful Contentment Dirigible, p. 646.

Publishers Weekly, February 15, 1971, review of The Gypsy Bears, p. 79; October 7, 2002, review of Bloody Jack, p. 74.

School Library Journal, September, 2002, Kit Vaughan, review of Bloody Jack, p. 229.