by Richard Meade Bache
A fifteen-year-old boy from New York, in 1839, finds himself thrust into a sea-going adventure in the Florida Keys. A popular book when first published in the 1860s, The Young Wrecker offers a wonderful depiction of nineteenth-century life in South Florida and in Key West. This book is close to perfect history for an area and era almost lost to historians.
The author, Richard Meade Bache, great-great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin and the nephew of General George Gordon Meade, describes characters, geography, natural history, weather, tough times, and humor that all ring true today. The author’s father and uncle supervised the building of several Florida Keys lighthouses that still exist today.
Paperback
