In 1861, as this story opens with the Yankee raid on the salt works at Cedar Key, Florida, a Confederate dollar is worth 90 cents in gold or silver. The Yankee soldiers, in their zeal to destroy the important Confederate salt works, kill young Henry Ferns step-pa, who has brought Henry to the Gulf Coast town on his first train ride. From that moment on, Henry's mind is locked on revenge. His goal to find the Yankee killers leads him throughout the South and much of the North as the war...
Through the story of one family, we learn how white settlers moved into the Florida territory, taking it from the natives with false treaties and finally all-out war. The natives in Florida had arrived there not long before, coming to fill the area left by earlier natives who had died off after the first contact with Europeans. Most of the arriving white settlers had been lured there by a federal government anxious to expand its territory. Thus, both sides were newcomers anxious to «take...
