Island of Cedars

Smith, Shana

January 1, 1923 - Rosewood Florida, a thriving African-American community in the Jim Crow South, was torched to oblivion by the infamous spark of one white woman's lie. Six innocent victims and untold gallons of blood and tears were left in the wake of the weeklong racist rampage that followed. Terrorized families were left homeless and on the run. Exactly one hundred years later, another spark has begun to burn: Hope. Here in the still wild heart of remote northwest Florida, race and ecology intersect inthe small Gulf coast town of Cedar Key, where the past, present, and future of our relationships with each other and the planet converge. With hundreds of souls still without a resting place in both Rosewood and Cedar Key, the first victim of the Rosewood massacre, Sam Carter, is determined to find a way Home with help from the Native ancestors. Meanwhile, three descendants--Sam's great-grandson, the great-great-granddaughter of Seminole Indian matriarch Polly Emateloye Parker, and the son of the leader of a local Ku Klux Klan group--form an unlikely alliance as they learn to open their hearts and minds to increasing signals from ghosts of the past. By heeding nature, spirit, and their own sense of instinctive connection, they all work together to begin to change the patterns of history.