Love blooms on Florida frontier

Read the first chapter of Trust in Love free
at Fiction Finder, a website that helps readers
find Christian fiction. (Gerri Bauer photo)

Update: Jan. 6, 2019: Read the first chapter  free at Fiction Finder!

Original Dec. 20, 2018 post:

Today, I depart from my usual focus on reality. Instead, I concentrate on my new novella about fictional life in pioneer Florida.

This is harder for me than you might think. Catholics are raised to steer clear of calling attention to themselves. Yet anyone who writes today knows the reality of the publishing business. Today's authors must self-promote. So here I am.

Trust in Love is novella length, 33,750 words. It's part of the Persimmon Hollow Legacy series but each book in the series can be read alone, in any order. They are individual stories. All are historical romances that take place in a community of faith and values.

Here's the back-cover blurb for Trust in Love, which is available for $2.99 in ebook and $5.99 in paperback:

Irish immigrant Margaret Murphy has many talents, but waitressing isn’t one of them. A hotel waitress job in pioneer Florida is her last chance to help her family stave off starvation. But she’s in danger of being fired. Will the love that blooms with a fellow worker, an immigrant from Italy, be a saving grace or a complicated distraction?

As with my blog about everyday life, the novella centers on daily living. My main characters are immigrants who work in one of the hotels that, in reality, were popular in late 19th century Florida. My hotel is fictional, but the long hours of work were real in that time and place. Tourists were wealthy and demanded and received excellence.

I've written previous blog posts about early Florida hotels, and they touch on some of the social dynamics:

• Eleven-course meals
• First Magic Kingdom?
• Fresh fruit displays

Now I feel better for having introduced some real-life aspects of the subject. And will end on that happy note, except for providing links, below, for purchase. :)

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Trust in Love is available from the following vendors and also in some library digital collections.

Amazon (ebook and paperback)
Barnes & Noble (ebook)
Kobo (ebook)

Apple Books (ebook)

From hominy to ham with champagne sauce

Much of the written records from pioneer Florida reflect the era's socioeconomics. Only wealthy and/or educated tourists and settlers had time and ability to leave behind records of their day-to-day life. The hotels and other businesses that catered to them churned out promotional literature. So we learn a lot about luxury accommodations of the time but don't learn what regular folk had for dinner in pioneer households.

Plant Museum reprint of historical brochure

We do know a lot, though, about the 11-course meals served at places like Ponce de Leon Hotel in St. Augustine and Tampa Bay Hotel in Tampa. The two were rival establishments that, for a time, represented the ultimate in elegance in late 1800s Florida. Some guests stayed for the season and considered the hotels their winter homes.

An interesting side note: Both former hotels are now centerpieces of well-regarded colleges, Flagler College in St. Augustine and University of Tampa on Florida's west coast. At Tampa, a portion of the historic hotel structure houses the Henry  B. Plant Museum, well worth the visit. In St. Augustine, Lightner Museum - another former hotel - is directly across the street from the college, and is also a must-see.

Neither modern dining hall offers the type of cuisine hotel guests expected back in the day. The 2012 issue of El Scribano, the St. Augustine Historical Society's journal of Florida history, has a really interesting article by society research library Chief Librarian Robert Nawrocki about kitchen operations at Ponce de Leon Hotel. 

Included is a detailed look at the 11 courses served for dinner on Jan. 31, 1893, the height of the winter season. I'm fascinated by the mix of mundane food and haute cuisine on the menu. Patrons could have hominy or stewed tomatoes with their Granadine of Lamb, a la Soubise. Everyday fruits (bananas, raisins) and nuts were rolled out after people feasted on macaroons and Baba au Rhum.

The scope of the menu surprises me, and I wonder how people ate so much at one meal. Judging from old photos, obesity wasn't a problem back then. I've heard diners ate sparingly of each serving in order to survive multiple courses. Which makes me wonder what happened to the leftovers. Were the local hungry fed? Were servants allowed to take home the extra food? Was it composted? Fed to backyard animals?

Official records, at least the ones I've run across, are silent on these details. The people who knew were too busy working to sit down and write about it.

Credit: 2012 El Scribano, page 33