Living in far away places with cultures as varied as the people who make them up is often a fascinating subject. This is the story of the adventures and sometimes misadventures of the author while living on the Caribbean island of St. Croix. The stories are a mix of the humorous and the somber as the itinerant author becomes intimately familiar with a new vocabulary of terms such as "culture shock" and "island madness". The book is unique in the context that at the end of each adventure retrospective spectacles are donned and the experiences examined philosophically exposing insightful perspectives on life. Five Precious Coins is a radiant gem for today when we are often times surrounded by seas of literary silt.