Jerry Vanschaik
ALLi Author Member
Location: United States of America
Genres: Young Adult (YA), Contemporary Fiction, Magical Realism
My name is Jerry Vanschaik, and I call myself America’s premier coffee novelist, perhaps because I am the only one. I have written two full length novels, Tripio and The Trier, and a YA novella entitled Ironjaws. I began my coffee career in coffee during the late 1980s. I've done a variety of jobs in the coffee business, from throwing 132-pound bags of green coffee off the back of a semi to throwing drunken customers out of my pioneering Starbucks store in Chicago. As a result, I am able to create worlds where coffee is nearly a living character and not a trendy plot affectation.
Jerry Vanschaik's books
Genres: Magical Realism
Formats: Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
Grab a cup of your favorite coffee beverage and take a seat at the Trier, a funky coffee house in mid-eighties Dayton, Ohio, where you find humor, romance, and possibly a ghost, but no traces of cell phones, laptops, or logo sirens. It's a normal Tuesday, and the Trierlings are busy writing novels, being cast in a play, finding, and trying to forget romance. The coffee is great, but the service not so much. They have no idea that their favorite coffee house is about to be sold by its disinterested owner. That is just the start of the week. On Wednesday night, the closing barista hears weird noises in the one-hundred-year- old building that has housed the Trier for a decade. Talk of the “Century ghost” circulates among the regulars as the day barista and his band, Tofaco, are planning to perform on Saturday night. On Thursday, Trier regular...
Genres: Contemporary Fiction
Formats: Paperback
Age Groups: 18+
Tripio is historical fiction novel, set in the Lakeview neighborhood of Chicago in the summer of 1992. From his small apartment, where he works on his first novel, Jay takes in his surroundings, survives his workdays as a key holder at an embryonic company called Starbucks, and begins a romance with a fellow employee. However, Tripio is not a love letter to Starbucks, but rather a day in the life of someone who experienced its’ growth in the trenches, giving the reader a look behind the curtain at the beginnings of world-renowned company during its early, formative years. As Jay is pulled up the ladder at Starbucks, he resists because he has moved to Chicago to test his metal as writer, not find a career. The book opens as he is struggling with writing the final chapters of his first novel. The inner workings of the mind of a first-time...
Genres: Young Adult (YA)
Formats: Paperback
Age Groups: 12-15
Ironjaws is not the first fish story ever told. But it may be the first one to blend fishing with basketball in a way that asks us to think over what teamwork and friendship are, and what winning really is.