200 YEAR COMMEMORATION OF JACKSON'S FORAY INTO FLORIDA. IN PURSUIT IS THE REST OF THE STORY: SEMINOLE, RED STICK AND BLACK.

2018 THE 200TH ANNIVERSARY 

OF THE FIRST SEMINOLE WAR 1818

It is 2018, 200 years after Andrew Jackson's foray into Florida in 1818, wreaking havoc and leaving the Seminole Indians in many cases, homeless and hopeless. 

Jackson came with his Coweta Indian minions under William McIntosh into Spanish Florida to pursue those Red Sticks now living among the Seminoles along with the Blacks, free and escaped slaves, who had survived the 1816 destruction of the Negro Fort located 18 miles up the Apalachicola River at Prospect Bluff.

Just who were those people?

How did their situation come to this?

I came into their story curious as to what happened to the Red Sticks after Horseshoe Bend and the end of the Creek Indian War. I researched those who survived the Creek Indian War about whom I had written in Swimming with Serpents.

Jackson illegally confiscated 23,000,000 acres of Creek land and left many homeless.  Where did they go?

And what did they do?

Those were the questions left in my mind after writing Swimming with Serpents. Homeless, ragged and hungry, Peter McQueen's band of at least 1000 floundered through the swamps to Pensacola and the British in Spanish Florida. They joined British officers Col. Edward Nicholls and Captain George Woodbine in the Corps of Colonial Marines.

And thus they came to fight Jackson once more in the First Seminole War. In Pursuit is their story.

You can find the histories and genealogies of the members of Jackson's Militia at any meeting att he Archives in History in Montgomery. But, discovering my own Native American heritage left me wanting to find out THEIR STORY.  And I have chosen to do it through HISTORICAL FICTION to try to make the history more personal. Perhaps we can see the events through THEIR eyes.

In Pursuit is a tale of revenge, betrayal, lost treasure and a people bent but not broken. In its midst are young lovers from diverse backgrounds whom fate have brought together.

Joie and Godfrey, first introduced in Swimming with Serpents set during the Creek War, come together once more and live an adventure with pirates, Red Sticks, Andrew Jackson's army, and British officers determined to build an empire.

I hope readers will come away from the novel satisfied with the love story and the adventure, motivated to honor the memory of some of those forgotten people in the history of our country.

In Pursuit is the second in the CREEK FAMILY SAGA, beginning with Swimming with Serpents, followed by In Pursuit and now the newly released On to Angola.