Red Grass River

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The Ashley Gang is a historical reality. Most of the characters in this novel did exist, and most of its major events did take place. Still, this is a work of fiction, and those familiar with the facts about the Ashleys and the Florida of their time will discern the liberties I’ve taken with the record.

PROLOGUE

The Liars Club

IF THE DEVIL EVER RAISED A GARDEN THE EVERGLADES WAS IT. THE biggest and meanest swamp you’re ever like to see—bigger than some entire states of the Union—it’s pineywoods and palmetto scrubs and cypress heads and tangled vines but mostly it’s a river, a river like no other on this earth. It’s sixty miles wide and half-a-foot deep and runs from Lake Okeechobee to the south end of the state over a layer of muck thats got no bottom. The whole thing covered with sawgrass sharp as a skinning razor. Not a thing else in that sawgrass country but here and there some hammocks—highground islands of hardwoods and palms—and most of them never been set foot on. Out there the world looks a whole lot bigger and there’s no end at all to the sky. They say it’s hardly another place in the world where you can look farther and see less. And all of it green of one shade or another except at sunrise and in the dying light of day when that great grass river goes so red it looks like it’s on fire or stained with blood.

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