Lee Gramling – författare

When Tate Barkley meet up with a man who calls himself “Gator” he doesn’t know he’s the boss of a gang of “plumers” – men who kill thousands of birds in the everglades so their pues can adorn fashionable ladies’ hats. In fact, he doesn’t even know what a “plumer” is.

But he learns quick enough, and more about the rough and dangerous bunch than he ever wanted to know. When he joins up with a rich Yankee detective who’s hunting a friend that’s gone missing in the vast and watery wilderness you can be sure there’s going to be trouble in the Everglades.

In the spring of 1771, John MacKenzie arrives in British-ruled St. Augustine after a year of fur trapping. He is quickly drawn into an adventure that involves defending a young woman indentured to the powerful and treacherous James Tyrone. MacKenzie and Becky Campbell set out across the untamed Florida wilderness, accompanied by a crusty sailor named Blackpool Bobby and Jeremiah, a black slave-hunter. As they move toward buried gold, Tyrone’s murderous trackers pursue all three, resulting in a showdown on the windswept sands of the Florida Gulf Coast.

Tate Barkley is back setting out to the vast and ominous swampland west of Orlando. Tate meets up with the odd and ornery little bald “perfessor" named Monk, who sells elixirs from his odd contraption of a wagon. Tate and Monk—and an odd assortment of other characters—follow a trail that draws them ever deeper into that vast forbidding swampland near the headwaters of the Withlacoochee River. This Cracker Western will have your spine tingling as it races on to the final all-out showdown

Peek Tillman has grown up in the Florida backcountry and knows that as he does his job of herding cattle to market across the big prairie to the east of the Gulf's Charlotte Harbor, he has to be on the lookout for wild beasts and poisonous reptiles—as well as predators of the human variety. But this time he encounters more than he can figure how to handle, namely a very beautiful young woman, married (unfortunately for Peek) to a real-live archaeologist down from the Northeast, not to mention some greedy outlaws set on taking advantage of the situation. Joined by Chekita Joe, a fierce frontiersman who knows the Florida wilderness even better than Peek, the young cowhand sets out to rescue the Yankees from what he believes is a doomed expedition.