Summary

Prefaced quote (1) — "Look at a stone cutter hammering away at his rock, perhaps a hundred times without so much a crack showing in it. Yet at the hundred-and-first blow it will split in two, and I know it was not the last blow that did it, but all that had gone before – Jacob Riis" (1).

Prologue: October 24, 1910 (3-8) — In the wake of a hurricane on an “Indian shell mound called Chokoloskee” in the Ten Thousand Islands of Southwest Florida, a motorboat approached shore (3). An unnamed woman watched the boat near, whispering, “Please no, Mister Watson” (4). Postmaster Smallwood, the first character introduced by name in this third-person narration, hoped Mr. Watson would not return. Smallwood urged Daniel David House, Bill House, and the House family’s black “help,” Henry Short, to not approach Watson’s boat with their rifles (5). The Houses ignored Smallwood and...