Jack Loscutoff comes alive on these pages as he crafts honest and uninhibited stories about his immigrant Russian heritage and his American education. He draws on his experience in the US Coast Guard to recreate several “life at sea” pieces in his “Semper Paratus.” He relies on his knowledge of Russian to describe his mother shrieking, “Bozha moi! (My God!) Semyon, shot yetha? (Sam, what’s this?) Where did all this water come from?” He recreates his harrowing drive, as a just-licensed driver, up San Francisco’s steep De Haro Street hill. 

He demonstrates his quick thinking by dousing the fire in his parents’ stove, and his guileless strategy in playing doctor with his sister and his cousin. As a boy, Jack knew the sand on the concrete bottom of the Los Angeles River and the surf-battered Pacific sea anemones, but his adult life swept him across place (California and the Midwest) as well as people (family, friends and women). He tells his stories mostly tongue-in-cheek, but with an uncommon knack of language.