The Crackers: The Legend of Jessie B. Tucker. First Novel in the Cracker Series.

Published by the Author, 2015. Signed and inscribed by the Author. Octavo, softbound (slick, full-color illustrated stiff wrappers), 281 pp. Fine. From Preface: You’ve read about how the west was won. This book is about how the wild and uninhabited middle of Florida was tamed! The Crackers: The Legend of Jessie B. Tucker is a story about four families who fled Georgia during the Civil War and headed south. They were successful farmers who did not own slaves and who felt that the war was not about them, but Sherman was burning Georgia, and they decided to start new lives in Florida or risk losing their families. It turned out that the war followed them south, and the four men had to join the fight in Florida or lose any hope of keeping their homesteads and settling down. Although this story is a novel based on historic facts about the events that happened to my ancestor, Jessie B. Tucker, it is not just a history of occurrences during and after the Civil War. It is about the lives of these white families from Georgia that came crashing together with a band of Creek Indians. Jessie is left for dead in the Everglades, having been shot by a Seminole scout for the Union Army and is rescued by three Creek braves. The subsequent meeting of Jessie B. Tucker and Two Worlds, the ancient spiritual leader of the Creek band, sparked the merging of whites and Indians that changed the lifestyle and landscape of Central Florida. There were plenty of laws in Florida after the Civil War, one of which was that all Indians had to live on the reservations. It took the wisdom and courage of Jessie B. Tucker to lay down his own law and defend it, in order to protect their white and Creek families from vicious outlaws, warring Indian tribes, angry ex-soldiers who had lost everything, and white families that had been torn apart, who were hostile to any red man. Last but not least, this story is about the love that held these white and Creek families together. Against all odds, these unlikely partners prevailed to create a new life and help to launch the second largest cattle drive in the Union, leaving a legacy that lives on many generations later...