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When Katherine Armstrong arranges a birthday weekend on her husband's private island in the Everglades, she plans for everything: the guest list, the menu, the flowers, the careful distance between herself and the dark water beyond the dock.

She does not plan for the storm.

By nightfall, the power is gone, the mainland is unreachable, and something in the mangrove shadows has begun to move. Katherine has spent years building a life that looks flawless from the outside. Now, with her children beside her and the water on every side, she will have to decide what that life was actually worth.

Sixty years earlier, a World War II veteran named Conrad Boone made a decision on these same waters — one that seemed containable, even necessary, at the time. He passed the consequence of that decision to his family. They learned to live with it. And the island learned to keep its secrets.

Until the storm.

Being a Florida native, I have come to appreciate my home state for its many quirks and its wildlife. There’s only one animal that gives me nightmares—alligators—but that might be because I live near Alligator Creek and Alligator Lake, and those aren’t mere names. They are home to those ferocious reptiles who routinely eat cats, dogs, and people who venture too close when an animal is hungry.

I was taken aback recently when I saw a YouTube video that proclaimed that Nile crocodiles had entered the Everglades, the huge nature preserve in the lower part of our state. The Everglades have already been devastated by pythons, another non-native animal that has eaten nearly all of our smaller mammals like rabbits, racoons, even deer. So the thought of another invasive creature, especially one at the top of the food chain, was enough to make me shiver.

So I did some research and discovered that yes, a couple of Nile crocodiles have been found in the Everglades, but wildlife officials think they got them all. Ha.  We’ll see. 

But after doing that research, I realized that it would take time for a breeding pair to grow to maturity and actually begin to breed. So if I wanted to write a story about how Nile crocs came to be in the Everglades, I’d actually have to do a dual-time novel, showing the animals when they arrived, and later, when they are beginning to do damage.  So that’s what I did. 

I love writing suspense, though most of mine aren’t the usual bad-guy-chases good-guy type of story. The “villain” in The Glades isn’t necessarily the crocodiles, either—they’re just doing what crocs do. No, the villain is a man who brought the crocs in because he liked them, and because he imagined himself to be an apex predator. Unfortunately, another family paid the price for his hubris as the years passed.

Whenever I write a story for the world at large (not specifically for believers), my Christian worldview always comes through, but this isn’t a Christian life story as much as it’s a morality tale about hubris and arrogance and silence in the face of wrongdoing. There’s a message for believers here, but there’s a message for the world, too.

I loved writing it, I loved learning about the Miccosukee natives who lives near the Everglades, and if I ever go down there, I’ll be sure to bring my camera, a watchful friend, and a gallon of mosquito repellant.

And I hope that you will enjoy being on the edge of your seat, and carry thoughts about the lessons of the Glades with you as you go on your way. 

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Until next time, may your reading bring both light and encouragement.

Happy reading!
~ Danielle.