ALLIGATORS, OUTLAWS, AND TOURISTS? Best Florida Fiction! Best Florida Young Adult Book! James J. Horgan Award Winner! */** IT S 1914 ON FLORIDA S LAST FRONTIER. Billy, a young Cracker who yearns to become a Florida cow hunter, the Chief, a Seminole boy who sees his way of life dying, and Queenie, an educated African-American girl from Baltimore who longs to have adventures are lost in the magical and mysterious Florida Jungle between Lake Okeechobee and the Atlantic Ocean. When outlaws block the only road back, they have to find a new way home. How will they survive, and who will they be when they get there? LIKENED BY CRITICS TO MARK TWAIN S HUCKLEBERRY FINN, The River Way Home is a tale of pre-bulldozer Florida for young adults and adults who are young at heart. Full of action, humor, exotic animals, and conflicts that remain contemporary today, it is a classic tale of friendship and coming-of-age that will take you back in time to your childhood favorites. TRAVEL BACK IN TIME TO THE FLORIDA JUNGLE around Lake Okeechobee, a land of mystery and promise that still lay unchanged 400 years after being discovered by Ponce de Leon. In 1914, central and south Florida is home to only a handful of people, but its millions of alligators, rivers, and forests teeming with fish, manatees, and birds of every size and color attract adventurers and sportsmen from the big east-coast cities. WHEN THEY GET THERE, they find scruffy and independent Florida Crackers homesteading the high ground and the few Seminole Indians, who survived three wars against the United States Military and never signed a peace treaty, wandering its narrow paths and watery byways, and outlaws, clinging to their culture and their freedom in a changing world. BUT THE TRAIN IS COMING, and the Billy, the Chief, and Queenie know it will bring hordes of Yankee adventurers and businessmen determined to civilize the Jungle. What they don t know is how they will survive in the New Florida . So, they set out in search of the future and find themselves and adventure, instead. WITH A SECTION OF OLD PHOTOGRAPHS AND SHORT HISTORICAL ESSAYS AT THE END, The River Way Home is historical fiction full of action, humor, and conflicts that remain contemporary today. *2013 - Florida Authors & Publishers Association **2014 - Florida Historical Society Keywords: Florida, Seminole, Native American, African-American, historical fiction, action, adventure, Florida Cracker, cracker, Indian, outlaw, John Ashley, train, fish, fishing, Indian River, St. Lucie River, environment, environmental, coming of age, history, photographs, girl, strong girl, Amazon, Stuart, Ft. Pierce, Flagler, alligator, gator, panther