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Local history about the 100-year-old store and trading post in southwest Florida which is now a museum.
By the author of The Snow Leopard, The Tree Where Man Was Born and On the River Styx, this novel is based around the circumstances of the death of a man in Florida 1910, who had terrorized his community in the Florida Everglades. It explores whether it was murder, exorcism or sacrifice.
In 1979, Wisconsin native Tim McBride hopped into his Mustang and headed south. He was twenty-one, and his best friend had offered him a job working as a crab fisherman in Chokoloskee Island, a town of fewer than 500 people on Florida's Gulf Coast. Easy of disposition and eager to experience life at its richest, McBride jumped in with both feet. But this wasn't a typical fishing outfit. McBride had been unwittingly recruited into a band of smugglers--middlemen between a Colombian marijuana cartel and their distributors in Miami. His elaborate team comprised fishermen, drivers, stock houses, security--seemingly all of Chokoloskee Island was in on the operation. As McBride came to accept his new role, tons upon tons of marijuana would pass through his hands. Then the federal government intervened in 1984, leaving the crew without a boss and most of its key players. McBride, now a veteran smuggler, was somehow spared. So when the Colombians came looking for a new middle-man, they turned to him. McBride became the boss of an operation that was ultimately responsible for smuggling 30 million pounds of marijuana. A self-proclaimed "Saltwater Cowboy," he would evade the Coast Guard for years, facing volatile Colombian drug lords and risking betrayal by romantic partners until his luck finally ran out. A tale of crime and excess, Saltwater Cowboy is the gripping memoir of one of the biggest pot smugglers in American history.
NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER • “Altogether gripping, shocking, and brilliantly told, not just a tour de force in its stylistic range, but a great American novel, as powerful a reading experience as nearly any in our literature.”—Michael Dirda, The New York Review of Books Killing Mister Watson, Lost Man’s River, and Bone by Bone—Peter Matthiessen’s great American epic about Everglades sugar planter and notorious outlaw E. J. Watson on the wild Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century—were originally conceived as one vast, mysterious novel. Now, in this bold new rendering, Matthiessen has marvelously distilled a monumental work while deepening the insights and motivations of his characters with brilliant rewriting throughout. Praise for Shadow Country “Magnificent . . . breathtaking . . . Finally now we have [this three-part saga] welded like a bell, and with Watson’s song the last sound, all the elements fuse and resonate.”—Los Angeles Times “Peter Matthiessen has done great things with the Watson trilogy. It’s the story of our continent, both land and people, and his writing does every justice to the blood fury of his themes.”—Don DeLillo “The fiction of Peter Ma­­tthiessen is the reason a lot of people in my generation decided to be writers. No doubt about it. Shadow Country lives up to anyone’s highest expectations for great writing.” —Richard Ford “Shadow Country, Matthiessen’s distillation of the earlier Watson saga, represents his original vision. It is the quintessence of his lifelong concerns, and a great legacy.”—W. S. Merwin “[An] epic masterpiece . . . a great American novel.”—The Miami Herald
"Totch Brown's memoirs of vanished days in the Ten Thousand Islands and the Everglades--the last real frontier in Florida, and even today the greatest roadless wilderness in the United States--are invaluable as well as vivid and entertaining, for Totch is a natural-born story-teller, and his accounts of fishing and gator hunting as well as his life beyond the law as gator poacher and drug runner are evocative and colorful, fresh and exciting."--from the foreword by Peter Matthiessen In the mysterious wilderness of swamps, marshes, and rivers that conceals life in the Florida Everglades, Totch Brown hung up his career as alligator hunter and commercial fisherman to become a self-confessed pot smuggler. Before the marijuana money rolled in, he survived excruciating poverty in one of the most primitive and beautiful spots on earth, Chokoloskee Island, in the mangrove keys known as the Ten Thousand Islands located at the western gateway to the Everglades National Park. Until he wrote this memoir--recollections from his childhood in the twenties that merge with reflections on a way of life dying at the hands of progress in the nineties--Totch had never read a book in his life. Still, his writing conveys the tension he experienced from trying to live off the land and within the laws of the land. Told with energy and authenticity, his story begins with the handful of souls who came to the area a hundred years ago to homestead on the high ground formed from oyster mounds built and left by the Calusa Indians. They lived close to nature in shacks built of tin or palmetto fans; they ate wild meat, Chokoloskee chicken (white ibis), swamp cabbage, even--when they were desperate--manatee; and they weathered all manner of natural disaster from hurricanes to swarms of "swamp angels" (mosquitoes). In his grandpa's day, Totch writes, outlaws and cutthroats would "shoot a man down just as quick as they'd knock down an egret, especially if he came between them and the plume birds." His grandparents were both contemporaries of Ed J. Watson, the subject of Peter Matthiessen's best-selling Killing Mr. Watson, and Totch is featured in the recent award-winning PBS film Lost Man's River: An Everglades Adventure with Peter Matthiessen. He also appeared in Wind Across the Everglades, the 1957 Budd Schulberg movie in which Totch and Burl Ives sing some of Totch's Florida cracker songs. Loren G. "Totch" Brown was born in Chokoloskee, Florida, in 1920. After purchasing his first motorboat at the age of thirteen (and retiring from formal schooling after the seventh grade) he worked as an alligator hunter, commercial fisherman, crabber, professional guide, poacher, marijuana runner, singer, and songwriter.
Create a canoeing or kayaking experience you’ll never forget, through Florida’s Everglades National Park and the 99-mile Wilderness Waterway. Those in the know will tell you there is only one way to truly experience Florida’s Everglades National Park, and that is by canoe or kayak. Whether you are a novice paddler or a seasoned whitewater river runner, Paddling the Everglades Wilderness Waterway is your all-in-one guide for safe adventure on this spectacular route. Authors Holly Genzen and Anne McCrary Sullivan present 17 of their favorite day- and overnight trips from various Everglades departure points. Having spent years exploring this maritime labyrinth, the authors share their intimate knowledge of historic Everglades rivers and bays, the endless horizon of its Gulf Coast, the eerie beauty of its mangrove forests, and the secrets of ancient tribes and early American pioneers. Descriptions of wildlife abound (the birds! the alligators!), as do the details of exquisite flora that flourishes here. Inside you’ll find: The complete 99-mile Wilderness Waterway route between Everglades City and Flamingo—north to south and south to north 17 day trips and overnight paddles Nearly 30 campsites and gazebo-like chickees stilted over the water Maps, GPS coordinates, trip preparation, safety tips, and waterway etiquette An expansive directory of Everglades flora, fauna, people, and places Intimate observations about Everglades history, environment, and its future Whether you only have time for a brief Everglades visit or are embarking on a 10-day expedition, this book is for you.
This book is a collection of quirky and fun stories about the history of Everglades City. Drawing from the author's time as a reporter for the Everglades City Echo, this book will chronicle lesser-known stories about the area. The book discusses the original pioneer families of Everglades City, and the time when this city was the governing center of Collier County. It goes on to chronicle colorful characters from the area, local landmarks, and the annual Seafood Festival that draws 20,000 people to the city every year.
A couple from middle-class America get married and pursue the American Dream. When they become boxed in by life, they decide to revisit the dreams of youth, leave the safety of suburbia to live aboard a sailboat with their five children.
On January 1 of 2016, Stefanie Payne, a creative professional working at NASA Headquarters, and Jonathan Irish, a photographer with National Geographic, left their lives in Washington, D.C. and hit the open road on an expedition to explore and document all 59 of America's national parks during the centennial celebration of the U.S. National Park Service - 59 parks in 52 weeks - the Greatest American Road Trip. Captured in more than 300,000 digital photographs, written stories, and videos shared by the national and international media, their project resulted in an incredible view of America's National Park System seen in its 100th year. 'A Year in the National Parks, The Greatest American Road Trip' is a gorgeous visual journey through our cherished public lands, detailing a rich tapestry of what makes each park special, as seen along an epic journey to visit them all within one special celebratory year.