History ... Romance ... Alligators! What happens in Indiantown, stays...
A LAND REMEMBERED meets WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING when genealogical research digs up treachery, intrigue, and romance.
Joe Parker doesn't expect to find romance, history, mystery, and danger when he comes to the rural village of Indiantown, Florida, to see if the honorable Cracker cowboy who wrote old letters to his biracial grandmother is his grandfather. But Carrie fears he's trying to take her land and her husband's racist threats ignite a battle for the future of the cowboy's family.
Dark secrets derail Joe's search for his true identity and his irreverent ex-girlfriend Maya's study of the life of the writer Zora Neale Hurston leads her into danger. Can Joe save them all with only the wisdom of an ancient Seminole as his guide?
Joe is the only child of a biracial single mother who's groomed him since birth to take over her family's small dry-goods empire. But he doesn't want the job.
The cowboy's letters opened up new worlds and ideas to him and he embarks on a quest to discover his true heritage. His irreverent ex-girlfriend, Maya, soon follows to research the last days of the writer Zora Neale Hurston for her masters thesis. Both are trying to escape their designated lives.
But nothing is what they expected.
In Indiantown, the clock's turned back fifty years. The cowboy's son still relies on hand-shake deals to control his vast ranching empire. The women are genteel, but stoic and strong. And the old Seminole still teaches the timeless truths found in forgotten stories of blood and history.
Joe and Maya fall under the spell of a young rancher named Carrie and an ancient Seminole who shares the secrets of the land, it's peoples, and their cultures. But dark secrets lurk beneath the surface. Carrie vows to fight to the death to keep what's hers and her husband spews racist threats.
When even darker secrets erupt, Maya's in the line of fire and the Seminole's words force Joe to choose what's his.
If you enjoyed A LAND REMEMBERED by Patrick Smith and WHERE THE CRAWDADS SING by Delia Owens, you will fall in love with INDIANTOWN. It's a romantic coming-of-age thriller set in rural Florida in 1992 that immerses you in the historical drama of 20th-Century Florida while laying bare the human condition with a dash of humor and keeping you riveted to your seat.
Like the PBS series FINDING YOUR ROOTS with Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Joe discovers a combination of documentation, story-telling, and wishful thinking. Unexpected bits and pieces of family history appear out of sequence and incomplete and he will never know or understand the whole of it.
And Indiantown teaches him that blood doesn't decide. He must make that choice himself.
INDIANTOWN is the second book in THE AMAZON QUEEN series, which is the three-part fictional biography of Women in the 20th Century. Joe's quest for his own identity uncovers the lifelong courage and audacity of the grandmother he always took for granted. INDIANTOWN and Book Three of the Series, CODE NAME NANETTE, which tells the story of Joe's grandmother' s exploits in World War II, are rated R for language, violence, and sexual situations. Book one, THE RIVER WAY HOME: The Adventures of the Cowboy, the Indian, & the Amazon Queen, which introduces Joe's grandmother as a fourteen-year-old girl, is historical fiction set I 1914 and rated G for children of all ages.
This book is intended for adult audiences. It explores the issues of racism, multi-culturalism, spousal abuse, sex, violence, and the search for identity and meaning in modern America.
