Today, in our 2020 Authors Showcase, we feature another inspiring story from Ronald Mackay, entitled In Sweet Rejoicing.
Before you read it by clicking here, check out the background to Ronald's story below.
Before you read it by clicking here, check out the background to Ronald's story below.
Ronald Mackay spent an unforgettable year in La Isla Baja – the north-western corner of the Island of Tenerife -- when he was 18 years old.
In 2018, almost 60 years later, he and his wife, Viviana, visited the island and the village where Ronald had lived and worked in order to launch his memoir A Tenerife con Cariño. He wrote A Tenerife con Cariño, a Spanish version of his memoir Fortunate Isle, as a gesture of love and respect for the villagers of Buenavista del Norte. They had taken him into their lives and hearts and given him work in 1960.
During that recent return trip to Tenerife, Juan González now 83 years of age, who had been Ronald’s foreman and friend when he worked in the banana plantations there, took him to the nearby village of Garachico to visit the statue of the Migrant (El Migrante).
That visit and that moving statue inspired this story.
In 2018, almost 60 years later, he and his wife, Viviana, visited the island and the village where Ronald had lived and worked in order to launch his memoir A Tenerife con Cariño. He wrote A Tenerife con Cariño, a Spanish version of his memoir Fortunate Isle, as a gesture of love and respect for the villagers of Buenavista del Norte. They had taken him into their lives and hearts and given him work in 1960.
During that recent return trip to Tenerife, Juan González now 83 years of age, who had been Ronald’s foreman and friend when he worked in the banana plantations there, took him to the nearby village of Garachico to visit the statue of the Migrant (El Migrante).
That visit and that moving statue inspired this story.
Ronald Mackay in Buenavista Del Norte, Canarias, Spain - 2019
