A River in Flood and Other Florida Stories by Marjory Stoneman Douglas

MARJORY STONEMAN DOUGLAS (1890-1998), Florida's eloquent and passionate environmentalist, shaped the world's perception of the Everglades as a vast, flowing river supporting a beautiful and carefully balanced ecosystem. Her lyric masterpiece, The Everglades: River of Grass, was published in 1947, the same year Everglades National Park was dedicated -- the same year federal engineers began their project to drain the Glades. She worked tenaciously to preserve the fragile wetland throughout her life, founding the nonprofit Friends of the Florida Everglades in her late seventies. Among her books are Florida: The Long Frontier, Alligator Crossing, Hurricane, and Freedom River. Years before her classic appeared, Douglas's short stories, published mainly in the Saturday Evening Post, evoked the natural splendor of Florida. The first collection of these, Nine Florida Stories by Marjory Stoneman Douglas, was published by University Press of Florida in 1990 on the observance of her 100th birthday.