James Chapin
James Chapin’s writing has appeared in The Washington Post, Slate, the Los Angeles Review of Books’ Marginalia channel, and Image Journal. He is from Daytona Beach, Florida, and currently lives in DeLand with his wife and their animals.
Photo credit: Katie Chapin
by James Chapin
“James Chapin brings a fraught era and place into electrifying focus in this thrilling and torrential southern. He is definitely a writer to watch.”
—Janisse Ray, author of Ecology of a Cracker Childhood
From the moment Nat Quinto and his wife Lucy set foot in the Florida Territory, they can't seem to steer clear of Jake Primrose, a rancher whose schemes to increase his already plentiful wealth ensnare everyone around him. Between Primrose's greed and the brutal conflicts brewing in the Territory surrounding them, will the Quinto family be able to stay true to themselves?
In four tales, the paths of the Primrose and Quinto families cross, separate, and inevitably intertwine in this virtuosic debut set during the tumultuous years of the Florida Territory's Second Seminole War and early statehood.