Meet Jack Bartley, author of Smoke on the Water and Hil Dome on Thursday, July 3rd at 6:30pm!
Jack Bartley
About Jack:
Jack Bartley lived on Oahu for almost five years while serving as an officer in the U.S. Navy in the 1970’s, completing a WestPac/Vietnam tour on a Knox-class destroyer escort during that time. He returned to the East Coast to earn his Ph.D. in ecology and was an associate professor at the University of Delaware. For fifteen years, Jack brought UD students to Hawaii for the month of January to study reef systems, volcanic origins, evolution, and Polynesian culture.
Jack’s column “Educational Perspectives” appeared monthly in the Newark Post for ten years. He published the romantic comedy Public Ed – A Novel in 2005 and it is still available as an e-book. His fictionalized memoir of his time in the US Navy, Smoke on the Water, was published by Koehler books on April 20, 2025. The first book of his young adult novel series, Hilo Dome, was published by Histria Books on May 20th, 2025, to be followed by The Seekers and The World Awakens.
Jack has released two CDs of Celtic folk music with his former band, “So’s Your Mom,” and is nearing the completion of a double-CD of “Americana Music” with his duo “Whiskey Creek.”
He is now retired and devotes his time to writing and music. Jack is a docent at the James Farm Ecological Preserve near his home in Ocean View, Delaware, where he lives with his wife, Susan, Jesse the Dog, and Clementine the Cat.
Smoke on the Water
May 1971. Jason Conley, a recent college graduate, finds himself about to pay the price for his free university education. He could not afford college, so he had applied for and was awarded an NROTC scholarship. The scholarship had strings attached; he now owed the Navy four years of service. Not wanting to be engulfed in the Vietnam war, he devises a scenario in which he would serve on a ship converted to be an oceanographic research support vessel in Hawaii, thousands of miles from the battle zone. A brilliant plan, if it worked.
It did. Then, it didn’t.
Through a series of events and miscues, some of his own making and some out of his control, Jason fails to negotiate life on board his first ship and is transferred to a new command, a ship that deploys on a WestPac tour to Vietnam the day he sets foot on board. He now faces new challenges. How does he avoid the same mistakes he made on the first ship? How does he reconcile his feelings about the Vietnam war while at the same time directing a destroyer escort on the gunline supporting U.S. and South Vietnamese troops? How does he stay alive?
“Smoke on the Water” is based on real life events. It is a coming-of-age tale that occurs in less than four years’ time, spanning events from the East Coast to Hawaii to Southeast Asia. It encompasses journeys and adventures in foreign lands, loves found and lost, humorous situations, and a maturation process within one man compressed in the pressure cooker of an unpopular war.
If you liked M*A*S*H you'll love this book.