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They Call Me Ishmael is a 2022 novel by John D. Kuhns. The story takes place largely in Bougainville, an island archipelago in the South Pacific, from the late 1980’s to the present time. “Island of Sorrow” might sound like a perverse way for Bougainvilleans to describe their tropical paradise, where mountain streams glitter with gold—not that its people aren’t intelligent and proud, particularly of their lustrous, black skin color, a feature which both distinguishes them and binds them together. But Bougainville, a pawn in the historical chess matches waged by colonial empires, has been deprived of the exhilaration of self-determination—something that could soon change.

In the 1980’s when, with the Papua New Guinea government’s greedy encouragement, an international mining conglomerate blasts the huge Panguna Mine into their midst, local tensions boil over. Bougainville lurches into “the Crisis,” a bloody, ten-year-long civil war with PNG. Twenty thousand Bougainvilleans, over ten percent of the population, die in the conflagration. Ishmael, a young man when war begins, comes of age in the Crisis’ deadly crucible, becoming the legendary guerilla leader of the Bougainville Revolutionary Army. Only when the two sides sign a peace agreement does he realize that his obligations to his people have barely begun. In the ambivalent chaos that characterizes post-Crisis Bougainville, Ishmael becomes the erstwhile sheriff of the land. He learns that crime isn’t Bougainville’s biggest problem: his people need political leaders to actually govern, not just bloviate while padding their wallets.

A day of reckoning, both for Ishmael and Bougainville, approaches: the peace agreement gives Bougainville the right to conduct an independence referendum, and a presidential election looms shortly thereafter. While Bougainvilleans wonder whether they should vote to take charge of their own affairs or continue to leave it to someone else, avaricious countries like China salivate over Bougainville’s billions in copper and gold.

To describe events, into the story drops Jack Davis, floating down onto the sands of Bougainville as if dangled from a parachute, a wayward American investor who decides to stay. A world apart from his previous life, Jack, like Ishmael, is at a turning point. Both men, one white and the other black, find themselves—in their own way and subject to their own means—choosing paths that will lead them to work together on behalf of a Bougainville that has a chance to become the newest nation on earth. Neither of them feel they have a choice. Based on actual events, They Call Me Ishmael is a swashbuckling saga staged in a Bali Hai-like, jungle-covered island chain full of heroes and villains. More than just a story about war and its individual protagonists, it is the epic ode to Bougainville that its people need and deserve. As seen through Jack Davis’s eyes, the book not only describes the courage, tenacity, and wisdom of Ishmael, the messiah who leads Bougainville out of its sorrow toward the light of freedom, but memorializes the perseverance and faith of all Bougainvilleans. Evocative and lyrical, the narrative is profoundly honest, as the novel’s two main characters—and Bougainvilleans as a people—examine themselves with humility, just as each of us must do.

Background Information
Ballad of a Tin Man was published in the United States by Post Hill Press on February 8, 2022(ISBN 9781637581490).[2] John D. Kuhns is an author, artist, businessman and investment banker, known for renewable and alternative energy investments around the world.