The River to Glory Land

by Janie DeVos

  “We should get going,” I said to Scott, smiling contentedly, though I’d have rather climbed on top of him again and completed our morning in the exact same position we’d begun the day in. But I could hear the small noises coming from the room next to ours as our six-month-old son began to stir; before long he’d be raising the rafters to be fed. However, I didn’t interrupt Scott as he worked his way up my body again until his mouth met mine. Slowly and sensually, we kissed. The love I felt for him created an actual physical ache, reminding me, once again, how deeply that love ran. He lifted his face and looked down at me. “I love you,” he whispered, as though he was reading my mind. I pulled his mouth down to mine one last time in response, then whispered, “We really have to go.”

  “I know,” Scott said with a groan as he rolled out of bed. “Hey, you wanna fly over the Brickell house before we go back to the hangar? I want to see what the new roof looks like.”

  “Does a southern woman like collards?” I laughed. “Of course, I do! I can’t wait to see the Spanish tiles on it. It’ll be beautiful.” We bought land to the south of the Miami River on Brickell Avenue, and though it wasn’t exactly “Millionaire’s Row,” we had dubbed it “Getting There Row.”

  I got out of bed and grabbed my robe off a rocker, then headed to the bathroom to shower before Jamey began to bellow for his breakfast.

  “Hey, Lily?” Scott said loudly. “When do we go to Tallahassee for your sister’s wedding? I need to let our pilots know our schedule.”

  I stuck my head out of the bathroom. “Shhhh! You’ll wake the baby,” I said with a mouth full of toothpaste. “We leave a week from Tuesday.”

  I ducked back into the bathroom and as I finished brushing, I smiled to myself, thinking about Olivia getting married. She’d gone off to Florida State College for Women about two months after I’d left for Santiago de Cuba, saying that everyone seemed to be moving on and so she figured she should, too. She was studying to become an accountant, and had met her future husband, Roland Hurst, in one of her economics classes, though he hadn’t been a fellow classmate, but rather her professor. Now, they were having a large wedding; far bigger than the one Scott and I had had. Our schedule had become so busy in the southern Caribbean that we just didn’t have time for a wedding on a grand scale. So, eighteen months earlier, we’d flown home to Miami for a long weekend, gotten married in the church I’d grown up in, with only family and close friends in attendance, and then flown right back out again. Since then, we’d hired on another pilot, and with three of them now handling our Island Air base down there, Scott and I had been able to move back to Miami. Now, we were busy expanding the original home base of Island Air and had increased the numbers of pilots to five by adding Scott and me on.

  One of our biggest clients was the Walden Group, which had bought the Spinnaker, but had renamed it the Walden House Hotel. We shuttled passengers back and forth to the islands for them, as well as provided the liquor for the Full House day trips, just as Scott used to do. My parents had sold the Walden Group their interest in the ship since the government contracts kept Strickland Water Crafts busy seven days a week. Regardless of the fact that a Depression was going on, Prohibition continued, and the greatest weapon the government had against smugglers was fast, reliable boats to intercept them. And the government considered Daddy’s some of the best.

  “Don’t forget; we have a meeting with those two new clients in the morning, Lily,” Scott said as he handed Jamey up to me once I was settled into the passenger seat of our plane. “It’s some of the Doxley brothers’ old business, you know.”

  The boys had never been seen again, leaving their clients hanging, and Scott had taken advantage of the situation. “Hauling cargo pays about as well as hauling tourists around,” he continued as he settled into his own seat. “Eventually, the tourist industry will pick up again, but until it does, hauling cargo is fine with me. Besides, what we’re making in our southern Caribbean operation will keep us going. But it goes without saying that the money your grandparents gave you is sure a big help getting our house built.”

  “And a big help buyin’ my plane,” I reminded him.

  “And your plane,” Scott laughed. “Boy, did your grandparents unload that money pit just in time! Look at the damage the ’28 hurricane caused just two months later. Then, on top of that, the market crashed. They were lucky. Your whole family is, actually.”

  “I prefer to think of it as being blessed.” I smiled.

  Scott began taxiing down the old dirt road that had been used for hauling citrus out of the grove at one time, though it wasn’t used much anymore except as a runway by us.

  We’d just gotten airborne when Scott leaned forward in his seat. “Hey, there are your grandparents in their canoe.” He pointed straight ahead. Glancing over at me, he saw that I was encumbered with the burden of our sleeping child in my arms. “Hold on.” He smiled. “I’ll fly alongside ’em.”

  Scott flew parallel to them and then tipped the right wing, bidding them farewell as they raised their hands in response.

  I placed my hand against the window, wishing I was touching theirs and watched them moving down the Ocklawaha for another second before Scott veered off to the southeast, toward Miami, and another river calling us home.

  “We each found our own corner,” I said softly.

  Scott glanced over at me. “What do you mean?”

  “Oh, nothing.” I smiled, closing my eyes and laying my head back on the seat. “Just something my family used to say. It’s a long story.”

  And it was. It was a story that was a part of each one of the Harjos, as well as the Stricklands, and now the Monroes. Along the way, we’d each found our own special place in glory land. Or, perhaps, those places had somehow found us. Either way, there we would stay; in Florida’s backwoods and on her windswept beaches, or along her rivers’ banks and amidst the rising buildings, until that time when we were called away, to lay claim to another corner, in a Glory Land most high.

  Find your place in Glory Land with these novels of Old Florida and one family’s loves, heartaches and triumphs. Available now from Lyrical!

  A CORNER IN GLORY LAND

  In turn-of-the-century Florida, a family comes of age, and a daughter finds her destiny entwined with a land as full of promise as it is danger.

  The steamy, sweltering banks of Florida’s Ocklawaha River don’t look much like Glory Land to young Eve Stewart, despite her father’s proclamation. But it’s here that Eve, her three siblings, and their parents will settle in July, 1875. Within a few years, Eve’s father, Hap, has made good on his assurances. They have a large, weathered clapboard house and a comfortable life, thanks to Hap’s job on a steamboat.

  Eve and her twin sister, Ivy, are blossoming into young women. Yet as Ivy grows more involved in medicine making under the tutelage of a neighboring black woman, her path leads away from the family.

  Eve, an aspiring writer, loves her home though she longs to see the wider world beyond its swamps and shores. But when she discovers a secret Ivy’s been keeping, Eve must decide between protecting the family name or saving her sister. With the help of a half-Creek Indian tracker, Max Harjo, Eve sets out to find Ivy, beginning a journey that will dare her to follow her ambitions and her passion wherever they lead.

  THE RISING OF GLORY LAND

  In the earliest days of the last century, a Florida family strives to build a legacy in the burgeoning new city of Miami…

  In South Florida, a region that offers some of life’s richest beauty as well as some of its harshest conditions, a city is rising. Eve and Max Harjo moved to Miami after the great freeze of 1894 wiped out their citrus grove. Eve is busy writing for the Miami Metropolis, Miami’s first newspaper, while Max salvages the ships that fall victim to Florida’s dangerous reefs and violent storms.

  Their nineteen-year-old daughter Eliza dives to bring up the salvaged t
reasures, uncaring that it is hardly woman’s work. And her stubborn determination to educate local Seminoles—male and female—draws the ire of the tribe’s chief. But Eliza’s greatest conflict will be choosing between two men: a brilliant inventor working on the prototype for a new motorboat, and a handsome lighthouse keeper from the northwest. When a massive storm unleashes its fury on South Florida, it reveals people’s truest characters and deepest secrets, changing lives as drastically as it changes the coastal landscape…

  About the Author

  Janie DeVos is a native of Coral Gables, Florida. She attended Florida State University, then worked in the advertising industry for over a decade, including radio, cable television, public relations and advertising firms. Though her career changed over the years, one thing didn’t— her love of writing. She is an award-winning children’s author.

  Learn more at www.janiedevos.com.