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T.K. Naliaka

Goodreads Author

Website

http://thedecaturseries.com/

Genre

Adventure/romance, Fiction, All Ages

Influences

Antoine St. Exupery, Louis L'Amour,Alistair McLean, Edgar Rice Burroug ...more

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May 2014

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T.K. Naliaka brings years of real-world living on three continents to create fresh, fast-paced fiction adventure writing for all ages.

"If one could speak two languages well and was raised on tea and baguettes for breakfast, in places where the most mundane daily business on the street is conducted in four languages, where horse carts park at cyber cafes, where would one go? Where could one go? Why, with a smile and a handshake, very far, indeed!"

"Naliaka's emotive, yet short and snappy anecdote of trade in an African setting illustrates the scope and complexity of doing business in the African continent."
Africa Rising: Doing Business in Africa, authors from Regents Business School, South Africa, June 2014

"To lovers of adventure and novelt ...more

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T.K. Naliaka’s books

Average rating: 3.86 · 7 ratings · 2 reviews · 4 distinct works

	In Time of Peril (The Decaturs, #1) 3.50 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	A Difficult Damsel to Rescue (The Decaturs, #2) 4.50 avg rating — 2 ratings — published 2014	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Between Dunes and Hard Places (The Decaturs,#3) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2015	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Iron Mixed with Sand Salt without Memory (The Decaturs,#4) 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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T.K. Naliaka's Blog: T.K. Naliaka's Goodreads Blog

Inspector Pascal Mysteries 4000 No. 6 Suspended!

Can initiative be a suspect quality in a homicide investigator? Will Inspector Pascal have had better luck facing down a would-be murderer than facing the Internal Affairs Inquiry Board? For all ages, new episode online!
http://tiptopdutop.com/inspector-pasc...
When 1000 words aren't enough, there's more time to solve the crime in Inspector Pascal Mysteries 4000 episodes at TIPTOPduTOP blog. Read more of this blog post »

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Published on January 29, 2019 19:06 • Tags: adventure, detective, fiction, inspector, mystery, short-story

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T.K. is Currently Reading

T.K. Naliaka is currently reading

Building the Health Bridge: Selections from the Works of Fred L. Soper

by Fred Lowe Soper

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T.K. Naliaka said: " Fred Lowe Soper remains the 'Go-To' expert in achieving on-the-ground public health victories against vectors of disease, especially mosquitoes. Had his great compassion and clear-eyed leadership for the well-being of every person, man, woman and chi Fred Lowe Soper remains the 'Go-To' expert in achieving on-the-ground public health victories against vectors of disease, especially mosquitoes. Had his great compassion and clear-eyed leadership for the well-being of every person, man, woman and child of every language, culture and continent been emulated and his expert medical and public health advice built from solid success and extensive experience on several continents in eradication been taken decades ago, the world today would not quivering with dread at the prospect of endemic or epidemic chikunguya, zika and dengue in regions where those have never been before - and all from the same vector, a rather fragile mosquito that succumbs quite quickly under low-tech, species-targeted eradication efforts, Aedes aegypti. Nor would Africa be suffering a mortality rate of nearly million persons a year from malaria transmitted by Anopheles gambiae. Once in Soper's sights, these two mosquito vectors during raging epidemic conditions were quickly dispensed with in months, their deadly diseases promptly disappearing with them, as other experts proclaimed what he was achieving wasn't achievable. He proved the impossible was very possible.

Soper achieved so much in his lifetime and had so much to give to help humanity that these selections from his collected works seem as if they are the products of three or four men, not one; a tour-de-force of public health, disease and disease vector issues:
Hookworm
Aedes aegypti
Anopheles gambiae
Yellow Fever - Vicerotomy, Serological, Jungle Yellow Fever, Yellow Fever vaccines
Louse-borne Typhus
Epidemics
Endemics
International Health Administration
Malaria eradication, Local, Continental, Global
Yaws,Tuberculosis, Smallpox
Eradication - Philosophy, Brazil, Egypt

A talented communicator and epidemiologist, Fred Soper could easily segue from detailed laboratory analysis to conveying the essential issues needed by village leaders and residents to understand and be part of the battle for their health at their own front doors. This volume, Building the Health Bridge, clearly showcases Soper's rapport with the researcher as well as the layman and points the interested public health professional or dedicated layperson to more detail in Soper's more extensive documentation of the massive public health projects he'd led, such as the incredibly important and useful, 'Anopheles gambiae in Brazil 1930-1940' Anopheles Gambiae in Brazil, 1930 to 1940. As today's disease and vector control particularly with malaria seem hamstrung by a growing disconnect between laboratory and field, Fred Lowe Soper's leadership and information remains timeless and is essential to anyone serious about achieving real and lasting field results that save human lives. This volume was expressly compiled with Soper's assistance to help empower generations after him to not accept the status quo, less than perfect results or defeat. ...more "

Aug 27, 2016 10:18AM · see review

T.K. Naliaka is currently reading

Walter Reed Doctor in Uniform

by L.N. Wood

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Jan 08, 2016 10:35AM

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Sanitation in Panama (Classic Reprint)

by William Crawford Gorgas

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T.K. Naliaka said: " Eradication of Mosquitoes - Yellow Fever and Malaria - in Havana and Panama should be the title of this incredibly important book, highly relevant to modern malaria-mosquito eradication, and especially since ‘sanitation’ was the discredited theory fo Eradication of Mosquitoes - Yellow Fever and Malaria - in Havana and Panama should be the title of this incredibly important book, highly relevant to modern malaria-mosquito eradication, and especially since ‘sanitation’ was the discredited theory for all pre-1900 yellow fever and malaria transmission. It was a settled consensus of medical science that was decisively thrown out into the dustbin of history by Major Dr. William Gorgas who’d been sent by the U.S. Army to Havana, Cuba in 1898 expressly to ‘clean up’ Havana in order to protect the American soldiers stationed there from getting yellow fever, and which had been known to be the source for all U.S. yellow fever epidemics for over a hundred years.

Immune from yellow fever from surviving a bout of it in his youth; clean up Gorgas did. “Havana was cleaner than any other city...” but it wasn’t showing the results the medical profession had insisted would occur. “The Cubans called attention to the fact that the very cleanest and best-kept portions of the city were by far the worst sufferers from yellow fever and the evidence was so staringly before our eyes that we had to acknowledge the truth of what they said.”

With the death toll from yellow fever mounting, it could be said that one of mankind’s greatest assemblies of modest, highly capable and diligent men, all in U.S. Army uniforms, converged on Havana to solve this mystery. Dr. Leonard Wood was the Governor-General of Cuba, Dr. Walter Reed was appointed to lead the research to identify how yellow fever was spread, Dr. William Gorgas was tasked with applying research discoveries to the city and population to eradicate yellow fever. But in 1900, they had no plan. “The health authorities were at their wit’s end. We evidently could not rid Havana as a focus of infection by any method we then knew.”

On the ground, the sanitation approach had utterly failed. It couldn’t be the answer. Yellow fever was transmitted some other way. With a massive debacle after great and diligent efforts, the field team had in their ears the insisting of the entire medical profession to redouble the hygiene efforts, but instead, the frustrated Army doctors turned to a lone voice right there in Havana – Dr. Carlos Finley - who for twenty years since 1881, had been telling anyone who would listen to him that yellow fever was transmitted by mosquitoes, and not just any mosquito but only the female stegomyia (Aedes aegypti). He knew it, but had not been able to prove it. The medical profession believed the ‘mosquito theory’ to be complete idiocy. But Dr. Walter Reed was intrigued and did his research, finding a few other voices like Dr. H.R. Carter who’d identified an “intrinsic incubation period for the disease,” and Dr. J.C. Nott who had asserted in 1848 that any sort of dissipated atmosphere of miasma could not be the cause of yellow fever.

This ‘visionary’ approach (considered more rogue than vision) required high level support to request funds, supplies and manpower to go after mosquitoes instead of ‘filth.’ In the face of a yellow fever assessment from a blue-ribbon medical Board that insisted a ‘filth’- associated bacillus inhaled by victims was the cause of yellow fever, “General George M. Sternberg, then Surgeon-General of the Army doubted the findings of the Board and obtained authority from the Secretary of War to appoint a board of Army medical doctors to investigate.”

This book is Dr. William Gorgas’s own account of how he implemented Dr. Reed’s transformative experimental discoveries to practical application, how he shifted his sanitation and hygiene teams to mosquito-eradication work and watched with astonished gratitude the rates of yellow fever and malaria infection quickly plummet. They stopped studying filth and began studying tiny, fragile insects, eager to learn everything about them in order to destroy them.

Dr. Gorgas was by all accounts a gracious, diligent and kind man. His genial voice is evident throughout this book. Highly readable for anyone, mixed with a bit of interesting history of the region and personal anecdotes, any anti-malaria campaign today will find a wealth of clear, practical advice and information on how Gorgas organized his force to find and kill every yellow fever-carrying Aedes aegypti mosquito in Havana and Panama and his effective assault on Anopheles gambiae, because he wanted this information to be used to help Africa rid itself of the two scourges of yellow fever and especially malaria that cause so much death and disability. Based on his experience in Havana and Panama, Dr. Gorgas firmly believed that malaria mosquito eradication of the worst offender, Anopheles gambiae, in endemic tropical zones in Africa was feasible.

This book, straight from the pen of the expert himself, is a pleasant contrast to so many public-health books today on malaria that are needlessly mired in jargon, laboratory detail and a technical vocabulary that makes them difficult for laypeople to understand. But when it comes to public health, laypeople become either effective force-multipliers or stubborn walls. Gorgas spent a lot of time working with the local populations to get them involved with the anti-mosquito sanitation teams. As a person who has spent decades in malaria-endemic zones, this accessibility of information to the public that actually has to live with malaria is critical. Gorgas and Reed also had refreshing and people-valuing views of the urgency of doing something decisive about yellow fever and malaria. They lost friends and co-workers to mosquito-borne diseases. They did not like to see human suffering; they lived to help people.

But today waiting around for laboratory discoveries seems to be the norm – despite what should be an alarming and motivating fact that close to 1 million people a year perish from malaria, most of them here in Africa, with millions more debilitated by it annually. Our generation has far more resources than Gorgas had at his disposal, yet he eradicated while the supine consensus today of people who do not live in endemic malaria zones is to tell those of us who do to ‘manage’ and ‘learn to live with malaria.’ It’s not that easy living with malaria. The reality of the high death toll should make that very obvious. Nets and drugs are no more than band aids when the overgrown city drainage canal outside the front door is hatching a million mosquitoes a week into the neighborhood. Dr. Gorgas explains quite clearly how to fix that sort of breeding problem quickly. It’s not hard; it doesn’t require high tech.

Dr. Gorgas doesn’t say much about the abuse he endured. Biographies of Dr. William Gorgas give much more detail of the tremendous pressure he was under, especially when after his triumph in Havana, he was sent to Panama to work his miracle there to save the canal project, abandoned by the French because of horrific yellow fever losses amongst their labor force. Incredibly, Dr. Gorgas was undermined at almost every step by bureaucrats in Washington who did not ‘believe’ in this ‘mosquito theory’ of yellow fever and personally held back the funds which had been budgeted to him for Panama, effectively shutting down his anti-mosquito work, then they petitioned President Roosevelt to fire Gorgas on grounds of incompetency and replace him with someone who adhered to their medical consensus of filth, completely rejecting Dr. Walter Reed’s comprehensive experimental proof that Aedes aegypti was the vector. History would have been much different with a lesser man clinging to the myth of bad air and filth in charge of yellow fever eradication. It’s a sober reminder that even though a campaign will result in priceless benefits to all humankind, it doesn’t mean it will be immune from the petty political actions of small and spiteful men.

The collection of great men who Gorgas worked with in tough conditions at great personal risk is a joy to discover. Dr. Reed and Dr. Gorgas’s letters to each other show their heartfelt mutual respect, camaraderie, and excitement that they knew they were upending centuries of medical conventions in public health. They were quick to name and praise the other men on their teams and often pointed out that their discoveries and achievements were built on the efforts of others before them. What comes to mind today when we hear the names Walter Reed Medical Center and Fort Leonard Wood doesn’t convey to anyone the noble character of these individuals who worked together to leave an incredible legacy to humanity, and each of them were profuse in their admiration for Dr. Gorgas who had the ability to apply experimental results to decisive and effective action.

The man who picked up Gorgas’ torch and directly built on Dr. William Crawford Gorgas’s work was Dr. Fred Lowe Soper, another highly-committed and effective leader in the eradication of mosquito-borne yellow fever and malaria. Like Gorgas, Soper was a man of action and perfect results. While experts were telling everyone Anopheles gambiae was impossible to eradicate from Northeast Brazil, Soper’s well-oiled anti-mosquito machine achieved eradication of Anopheles gambiae in months. These are men we should be studying, listening to and emulating, not to any of the nay-sayers who have never even tried.

This edition is a historical reproduction of the original book by William Crawford Gorgas, published by BiblioLife, available through Amazon. ...more "

Jan 10, 2016 02:56AM · see review

Quotes by T.K. Naliaka (?)

“The wolves of the world have no pity for the confused, the scattered, the lost or the weak.”
― T.K. Naliaka, In Time of Peril

tags: clarity-of-vision, steadfastness, strength-and-courage, understanding, unity

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“Use all this life to make yourself a great writer, thoughtful and kind, slowly, surely over the years.”
― T.K. Naliaka

tags: growing-older, wisdom-in-fiction, writing, writing-life

10 likes

“Transparency is critical in public health and epidemics; laypeople become either effective force-multipliers or stubborn walls.”
― T.K. Naliaka

tags: communication, cooperation, cooperation-and-attitude, disease-control, effectiveness, epidemics, malaria-eradication, mosquito-borne-diseases, public-health, stubbornness, success, success-strategies, transparency

6 likes

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Topics Mentioning This Author

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Around the World ...: Authors in the Group?	294	1132	Dec 21, 2025 02:53AM
Around the World ...: * Introductions	3140	5269	Jan 04, 2026 10:46AM

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T.K.’s Quotes

“If one could speak two languages well and was raised on tea and baguettes for breakfast,in places where the most mundane daily business on the street is conducted in four languages, where horse carts park at cyber cafes, where would one go? Where could one go? Why,with a smile and a handshake, very far, indeed!”
― T.K. Naliaka

tags: adventure-fiction, africa, captives, fathers-and-sons

1 likes

“Mais voici qu’aujourd’hui nous avons éprouvé la soif. Et ce puits que nous connaissons, nous découvrons, aujourd’hui seulement, qu’il rayonne sure l’étendue. Une femme invisible peut enchanter ainsi toute une maison. Un puits porte loin, comme l’amour.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Terre des Hommes

tags: africa, captive, damsel, peril, rescue, romance, sahel

1 likes

“Nous avons accepté la règle du jeu, le jeu nous forme à son image. Le Sahara, c’est en nous qu’il se montre. L’aborder ce n’est point visiter l’oasis, c’est faire notre religion d’une fontaine.”
― Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Terre des Hommes

tags: adventure-fiction, africa, damsel, kidnapping, rescue, romance, sahel

1 likes

“To witness the awe of human beings delighting in their own hands forming the written word was humbling and he understood it profoundly at that moment watching those two, with the ancient land around them, in their traditional robes and the resting camels by their campfire, intently regarding writing with such immense respect … that illiteracy meant subsistence, while literacy meant human advancement, the base on which higher achievements and accomplishments of great civilizations could be built.”
― T.K. Naliaka

tags: adventure-fiction, africa, literacy, sahel, the-decaturs-series, youth-fiction

4 likes

“La verite pour l'homme, c'est ce qui fait de lui un homme.”
― St-Exupery, Terre des Hommes

tags: truth, truth-of-life

3 likes

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message 1: by Carol

May 17, 2015 12:55PM

Hi TK, Thank you for the quote. You are clearly very creative and have a 'way with words'. Don't rush. Find out what the editor has done/is doing.
BY the way, have started reading your book, and am enjoying it. I'm a slow reader at the moment as doing a lot of things, but will speed up soon!

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