Pedro Menendez sailed to Florida on his flagship, the San Pelayo, named after a knight who had successfully defeated the Spanish Moors 850 years earlier. There were twenty cabin boys on board the San Pelayo.Ship boys or cabin boys were from ages eleven to thirteen. Many boys were from poor families who could neither clothe nor feed them. They were servants to the officers and worked long hours, often doing the necessary dirty work onboard the ships.This courageous story is told through the eyes of one such fictitious cabin boy named Rocco that would witness the first Thanksgiving on September 8, 1565. This historic event would take place 42 years before Jamestown was settled and 55 years before the Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. Today a 208’ cross marks the spot where the landing happened. Rocco would also follow Menendez on his voyage to chart Florida’s coastline, destroy the French fort in Florida, evangelize the Florida Indians, and colonize Florida in the name of the King of Spain – King Philip II. Menendez was also searching for his missing son Juan. His son’s fleet of thirteen ships scattered in a storm off the coast of Florida five years earlier. Only eight ships returned to Spain.All of this true tale is told through the eyes of a child but backed up with historical notes, character reference guide, a timeline, nautical terminology, and a bibliography.

Pedro Menéndez de Avilés (1519–1574) founded St. Augustine in 1565. His expedition was documented by his brother-in-law, Gonzalo Solís de Merás, who left a detailed and passionate account of the events leading to the establishment of America’s oldest city. Until recently, the only extant version of Solís de Merás’s record was one single manuscript that Eugenio Ruidíaz y Caravia transcribed in 1893, and subsequent editions and translations have always followed Ruidíaz’s text. In 2012, David Arbesú discovered a more complete record: a manuscript including folios lost for centuries and, more important, excluding portions of the 1893 publication based on retellings rather than the original document. In the resulting volume, Pedro Menéndez de Avilés and the Conquest of Florida, Arbesú sheds light on principal events missing from the story of St. Augustine’s founding. By consulting the original chronicle, Arbesú provides readers with the definitive bilingual edition of this seminal text.

The Calusa's historic repulsion of 16th-century Spanish occupiers.

Fifteen-year-old Jennifer Brice Hamilton has been subjected to her mother’s new way of life ever since her parents’ divorce two years earlier - a move to a lower tax bracket in Chicago, an undesirable school, and her mother’s newest boyfriend: Phil. Jennifer rebels. Her mother’s answer to the “handful-slash-Jennifer” is to pack her up and send her to her grandma’s, whom Jennifer has not seen in almost three years. Her mother’s lusty plan is for Jennifer to reside there 'til Christmas. Jennifer captures her life in Flamingo Junction, Florida, with her grandmother in an ongoing diary of sorts - a sketchbook that she has titled Jenniferology - The Study of Jennifer. Jennifer’s grandmother, Mama Rudeen, lives in a retirement community called Camelot in North Florida. Mama Rudeen is not what Jennifer expected, nor are her grandmother’s friends - the gals: Miss Maggie Pearl, Miss Addie, and Miss Gaynell...and the guy - Sir Stuckie. Jennifer envisioned octogenarians sitting around waiting to take their last breath. She discovers that retirees have a zest for life. And, more importantly, they define to Jennifer what unconditional love truly means. Maybe it takes a retirement village to raise a child.

Between 1539 and 1542 Hernando de Soto led a small army on a desperate journey of exploration of almost four thousand miles across the U. S. Southeast. Until the 1998 publication of Charles M. Hudson's foundational Knights of Spain, Warriors of the Sun, De Soto's path had been one of history's most intriguing mysteries. With this book, anthropologist Charles Hudson offers a solution to the question, "Where did de Soto go?" Using a new route reconstruction, for the first time the story of the de Soto expedition can be laid on a map, and in many instances it can be tied to specific archaeological sites. Arguably the most important event in the history of the Southeast in the sixteenth century, De Soto's journey cut a bloody and indelible swath across both the landscape and native cultures in a quest for gold and personal glory. The desperate Spanish army followed the sunset from Florida to Texas before abandoning its mission. De Soto's one triumph was that he was the first European to explore the vast region that would be the American South, but he died on the banks of the Mississippi River a broken man in 1542. With a new foreword by Robbie Ethridge reflecting on the continuing influence of this now classic text, the twentieth-anniversary edition of Knights is a clearly written narrative that unfolds against the exotic backdrop of a now extinct social and geographic landscape. Hudson masterfully chronicles both De Soto's expedition and the native societies he visited. A blending of archaeology, history, and historical geography, this is a monumental study of the sixteenth-century Southeast.