A great history of the development of the Southwest Florida...For any book group in Florida I would think this would be on their list. It is long, 912 pages, but the book is really in three parts. One can read just Watson's story, which is the last part of the book to see how hard life was for those people. I loved so many paragraphs, the discriptions of people, places and even the smells of the time are vivid and a joy to read.