Twenty-three-year-old Elizabeth Sprague has recently graduated from her botany studies at Wellesley College and now wants to leave her secure life with her parents in Boston to go to the Florida Everglades to study the plants there--something that in 1893 no woman has ever done. Her domineering father has other plans for her, namely, marrying her to a young man Beth detests in order to join his business with that of a prominent family. Her solution is to go off to St. Augustine with her aunt as chaperone. Her family assumes this will satisfy her Florida longings, but once in St. Augustine she...