This was an interesting look at around 100 years of Florida history, starting just before the Civil War, as seen by the MacIvey family. Tobias MacIvey was a dirt poor settler, scrounging for survival, who gets into the cattle business. Apparently, there were a lot of wild cows about, so all one had to do was round them up, put on your brand, fatten them up, then take them to market. Easy, right? Zech, son of Tobias, takes over and also expands into orange groves, followed by Sol who makes a fortune from the land he and his father presciently bought up over the years. In the end Sol dies a bitter man, upset at the encroachment of civilization on the wilderness which represents his family’s roots. (But that civilization is exactly what made him so rich…)
Anyway, the characters and plot are a bit thin – really they are just a way to showcase events from Florida history. In the first period, there were plenty of expected dangers for settlers to be wary of: panthers, rattlers, boars, gators, bears, wolves; cattle rustlers; hurricanes. Unexpected danger: mosquitos thick enough to choke a cow. Yikes!
Tobias was pressed into Confederate service as a cattle drover, then as a log cutter (for fortifications). But otherwise they were not affected much by the Civil War.
I didn’t know where the term “cracker” came from – thought it was somewhat derogatory. Maybe it is. But it came from the crack of the whip from the Florida cattle drivers.
I was perplexed at the family’s insistence at keeping chests full of gold coins locked up at home. Wouldn’t someone have broken in and stolen it when they were away for weeks/months on the cattle drives down to Punta Rassa?
Apparently it snowed quite a bit in Florida in 1895, killing many orange trees.
uniformly uninformative 