2016 Gold eLit Book Award international competition Beginning four centuries ago North America was almost annexed to Imperial Spain's vast New World empire. Known as La Florida, "the land of flowers," this well researched and scholarly work examines the earliest period of United States colonial history to reveal the often forgotten invasions by Spanish conquistadors Juan Ponce de Leon, Lucas Vasquez de Ayllon, Panfilo de Narvaez, Francisco Vazquez de Coronado and Hernando de Soto. Spanish armies were the first Europeans to travel inland into this vast unknown continent, the first to encounter...