Jerry Allen

Jerry grew up in eastern Massachusetts as the landscape changed from rural to suburban. With an abundance of woods to play in around his home and summers spent boating on Cape Cod, he naturally developed a love for the outdoors and adventure.

During his twenties Jerry lived in northern New Hampshire and earned his living as a logger. When not working in the woods he traipsed the mountains and canoed the streams. There he developed a love of fly fishing and started tying trout flies commercially, even working part time as an illustrator for a magazine called Fly Tyer. Dabbling with the graphic arts led to a brief two-year period where he owned a commercial printing shop.

Eventually, Jerry moved back to Massachusetts to help his father run a tree care business. There, the town he had grown up in had become an upscale suburb and he felt much like a fish out of water. Sailing provided him with an escape on the weekends and quickly became a passion. Soon he began planning for the day he could "sail away".

When the family business was sold, Jerry moved aboard his sailboat with his wife and infant daughter to sail down the coast to Florida, where he worked in a boat yard as a carpenter. The following spring he cruised some of the Bahamas and then up the East coast again to work at a colorful old fashioned boat yard on Cape Cod. That fall he sailed south to the Caribbean, which Jerry would call home for over ten years.

All of his life Jerry has loved to write and, while living aboard his boat, found the time to start pursuing this passion. After having several magazine articles published and a couple of pieces of fiction, he started writing novels. The characters Jerry lived and worked with gave him all the inspiration he needed.

The call of his New England roots was strong and pulled him back to the island of Martha's Vineyard, where he has unpacked his things and built a successful woodworking shop. But eventually the carnival atmosphere of the island eventually chased him away to the quiet of the North Woods.

Along the way he crossed paths with a woman he had met twenty-five years earlier in the Virgin Islands. Discovering they shared much more than just a love for sailing, he married the woman and now they hike, fly fish, and run their two German wirehaired pointers in the Great North Woods. When the weather is lousy Jerry stays in and writes a bit.