The time is the mid-1880s, when Florida south of St. Augustine is a virtual wilderness and Daytona, Miami, and Tampa are little more than dots on the maritime charts. Addie is a "beanery queen" who ekes out a living from her canteen at the convergence of two primitive railroads. She is popular with the train crews but is disdained by most of the townspeople because she lives, unmarried, with a war veteran whose mental disorder is considered to be of demonic origin.
Thanks to her prevention of a disastrous train wreck, Addie meets Burke, the owner-operator of the railroad that links the seaside docks at Mayport with St. Augustine. An attraction blossoms but is tantalizingly unfulfilled when social persecution forces Addie to flee into the subtropical wilderness. Burke launches a search for her, not knowing that she has become a pawn in a plot to usurp him of his empire.
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Lee Thompson is the pseudonym of Jack D. Hunter, who is well-known for his espionage thrillers. During his fifty-six year career in print and broadcast journalism and military and Congressional service, he was a senior editor and editorial consultant for the Florida Times Union and St. Augustine Record in Florida.
Johanna Ward (a.k.a. Kate Reading) is an Audie Award-winning narrator and has received numerous Earphones Awards from AudioFile magazine. She is also a theater actor in the Washington, DC, area and has been a member of Woolly Mammoth Theatre Company since 1987. Her work onstage has been recognized by the Helen Hayes Awards Society, among others. She and her husband live in Hyattsville, Maryland, with their two children.
