Marjory Stoneman Douglas loved her new home in Florida and her job writing for her father's newspaper. She arrived in 1915, a crucial time when developers were dredging up the sea bottom to create coastal retreats, destroying the ecosystem of the unique habitat known as the Everglades.
He was stealing the land--changing it, moving it, using it--but unlike a common thief, he felt no need to hide.~ from Among the Beautiful Beasts by Lori McMullen
by Lori McMullen
She Writes Press
Pub Date 01 Jun 2021
ISBN: 9781647421069
paperback $16.95 (USD)
I grew up in unincorporated Dade County, outside of Miami. My father was a Vietnam vet who supervised a soda bottling warehouse, and my mother was an aide in the public schools. As a family, we took one trip each year — to the west coast of Florida. The best part of this trip was the drive along Route 41, a two-lane, pot-hole ridden stretch of road that bisected Everglades National Park and Big Cypress National Preserve. The vast, wild space enthralled me, and as I got older and began to write fiction, South Florida found its way into my stories again and again. My short story “Gringa” appeared in the Tampa Review, and my short story “June Bug” recently appeared in Slush Pile magazine. Among the Beautiful Beasts is my first novel.I left Miami to attend Dartmouth College and Harvard Law School. Currently, I live with my husband and three daughters in Chicago. My passion for horseback riding is nearly as great as my passion for writing, and any free time I have is spent riding and jumping my horse.
from the publisher
Set in the early 1900s, Among the Beautiful Beasts is the untold story of the early life of Marjory Stoneman Douglas, known in her later years as a tireless activist for the Florida Everglades.
After a childhood spent in New England estranged from her father and bewildered by her mother, who fades into madness, Marjory marries a swindler thirty years her senior. The marriage nearly destroys her, but Marjory finds the courage to move to Miami, where she is reunited with her father and begins a new life as a journalist in that bustling, booming frontier town.
Buoyed by a growing sense of independence and an affair with a rival journalist, Marjory embraces a life lived at the intersection of the untamed Everglades and the rapacious urban development that threatens it.
When the demands of a man once again begin to swallow Marjory’s own desires and dreams, she sees herself in the vulnerable, inimitable Everglades and is forced to decide whether to commit to a life of subjugation or leap into the wild unknown.
Told in chapters that alternate between an urgent midnight chase through the wetlands and extensive narrative flashbacks, Among the Beautiful Beasts is at once suspenseful and deeply reflective.