Lament of the cracker cowboy Book

This is a thoughtful and sometimes humorous commentary on life and work in rural Florida today and throughout more than four centuries of cowboy history. Poetry in the cowboy idiom speaks of the exotic nature of ranching in the sub- tropics. Prose chapters summarize the history of a cattle trade that began 150 years ahead of the Texas cow culture, ranging over a palmetto frontier that outlasted the Old West by a half century. The first recorded battle between cowboys and Indians was fought in Florida, and this State's ranchers and native peoples are forever linked in the sometimes violent history of Florida. The title poem in this collection was published in the September 1998 issue of Western Horseman magazine.